Macallum graduated in 1880 from the University of Toronto, winning a silver medal in the natural sciences. He later earned his Bachelor of Medicine from Toronto in 1889. He received many other degrees and academic honors and was a member of numerous learned societies and professional groups, serving at various times as an officer in several of these.
Gallery of Archibald Macallum
Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
Macallum obtained his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1888.
Macallum graduated in 1880 from the University of Toronto, winning a silver medal in the natural sciences. He later earned his Bachelor of Medicine from Toronto in 1889. He received many other degrees and academic honors and was a member of numerous learned societies and professional groups, serving at various times as an officer in several of these.
Archibald Byron Macallum was a Canadian biochemist. He was also a founder of the National Research Council of Canada.
Background
Macallum was born on April 7, 1858, in Central Elgin, Canada, one of several children of Alexander McCallum and Annie McAlpine. His father emigrated from Kilmartin, Argyllshire, Scotland, in the early nineteenth century, settling in south-western Ontario. The family was of Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian background, and many members achieved distinction in the professions in Canada and the United States.
Education
Macallum graduated in 1880 from the University of Toronto, winning a silver medal in the natural sciences. He obtained his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1888 and his Bachelor of Medicine from Toronto in 1889. He received many other degrees and academic honors and was a member of numerous learned societies and professional groups, serving at various times as an officer in several of these.
For some time after graduation, Macallum taught high school in Cornwall, Ontario. In 1883 he was appointed lecturer in biology at Toronto. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Canadian Society in 1901 and fellow of the Royal Society in 1906.
From 1890 to 1916 Macallum was a professor of physiology and later of biochemistry at Toronto. After a three-year period devoted to the founding of the National Research Council of Canada, he joined the faculty of McGill University as a professor of biochemistry. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation, he was a visiting professor in 1921 at the Peking Union College. Upon his retirement in 1928, he returned to London, Ontario, continuing his research on a part-time basis at the Medical School of the University of Western Ontario, of which his son Archibald Bruce became dean in 1928 to 1934.
Macallum is perhaps best known today for his theory that there is a significant relationship between the inorganic composition of vertebrate blood plasma and that of the ancient oceans.
Macallum argued that specific concentrations of inorganic ions encountered in modern vertebrate blood plasma constitute an heirloom from primeval sea life, preserved by the emergence of multicellular organisms having closed circulatory systems, and by the evolution of the kidney. In a 1918 paper, he ascribed to the kidney the important function of regulating the inorganic composition of the body fluids. His most mature statement on the supposed paleochemistry of the body fluids appeared in 1926. Despite obvious difficulties of conclusive demonstration, this theory is still referred to in modern texts of general physiology.
Some of his other important scientific papers dealt with the microchemical determination and localization of the inorganic constituents of plant and animal tissues. More recent investigations have shown a number of errors in some of his conclusions due to the limitation of techniques available in his time.
Membership
Royal Society of Canada
,
Canada
1916 - 1917
Connections
Macallum married Winifred Isobel Bruce in Cornwall, Ontario.