|
This information is provided by the candidate
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH # Mar 9, 2000
John Wendell Severinghaus MD, FRCA UK (hon), Dr Med Hon Causa (Copenhagen)
Dr. Severinghaus is Professor Emeritus of Anesthesia at the University of California in San Francisco. He was a Senior Staff Member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute. He was born in Madison, Wisconsin on May 6, 1922. After majoring in physics he designed radar test equipment at MIT during World War II During medical school he developed the first electrophrenic respirators. He published the first measurements of the rate of uptake of N2O during anesthesia.
From 1953-1958, he was chief of anesthesia research at NIH, especially studying the use of hypothermia in surgery. He introduced the CO2 electrode and the first blood gas analysis system. In 1958, he joined UCSF in the Cardiovascular Research Institute and a new anesthesia department.
In 1964 on sabbatical in Copenhagen, Severinghaus designed a blood gas slide rule relating oxygen pressure to hemoglobin saturation, and solving acid base and altitude problems. With help of many colleagues he published the standard human oxygen dissociation curve, with a simple equation, and accurate corrections for temperature and pH effects.
Severinghaus held an NIH Research Career Award from 1963 to 1991. His 350+ publications concern physiology of respiration and pulmonary and cerebral circulation, location of the medullary ventral surface CO2 chemoreceptors, physiologic effects of anesthetics, of high and low Pco2 and Po2, of high altitude on natives and newcomers on the lung, on cerebral blood flow, brain acid base balance and respiratory control. He developed and tested instruments such as pulse oximeters, brain and transcutaneous blood gas electrodes, introduced multiplexed mass spectrometry for multi-patient monitoring in surgery and through this, pioneered the introduction of computers in clinical anesthesia.
He served as NIH liason to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science (1953-58), as member of an NIH study section (1961-66), and as respiration section editor of the Journal of Applied Physiology (1964-66). He continues to serve as referee for physiology, medicine and anesthesia journals.
He was named UCSF Faculty Research Lecturer in 1981, and received the first American Society of Anesthesiologists Award for Excellence in Research in 1986. He is an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (UK) (1989), and Doctor of Medicine Honoris Causa of the University of Copenhagen (1979). Severinghaus continues research at UCSF, with interests in the biochemical causes of high altitude cerebral edema, the theory of the limits of oxygen delivery to muscle cytochrome during maximum work, methods of testing human hypoxia responses, and instrumentation in anesthesia.
He married Wellesley graduate and artist-educator Elinor Peck in 1948. They have 4 children and have lived in Ross, California since 1958. He is a member of the public Marin Healthcare District Board hoping to restore quality health care at Marin General Hospital.
|
League of Women Voters of California
![[photo]](severinghaus_j.jpg)
