John Scott Haldanewas a Scottish physiologist famous for intrepid self-experimentation which led to many important discoveries about the human body and the nature of gases. Haldane locked himself in sealed chambers breathing potentially lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body.
Background
John Scott Haldane was born in Edinburgh. He was the son of Robert Haldane and the grandson of the Scottish evangelist James Alexander Haldane. His mother was Mary Elizabeth Burdon-Sanderson, the daughter of Richard Burdon-Sanderson and the granddaughter of Sir Thomas Burdon.
His maternal uncle was the physiologist John Scott Burdon-Sanderson. He was the brother of Elizabeth Haldane, William Stowell Haldane and Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane.
Education
Haldane attended Edinburgh Academy, Edinburgh University and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He graduated in medicine from Edinburgh University Medical School in 1884.
From 1887 to 1913, Haldane was on the staff of the department of physiology at Oxford University. He was Gifford Lecturer in the University of Glasgow, Fellow of New College, Oxford, from October 1901, and Honorary Professor of the University of Birmingham. Haldane received numerous honorary degrees.
Haldane died in Oxford at midnight on the night of 14 March/15 March 1936. He had just returned from a trip he had undertaken to investigate cases of heat stroke in the oil refineries in Persia.
Haldane was a President of the English Institution of Mining Engineers, a Companion of Honor of the British Court, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Royal Society
1897
New College at Oxford
1905
Connections
On 12 December 1891 he married Louisa Kathleen Coutts Trotter (1863-1961), daughter of Coutts Trotter FRGS and Harriet Augusta Keatinge. They had two children: the scientist J. B. S. Haldane and the author Naomi Mitchison.