Francis Gano Benedict was an American chemist, physiologist, and nutritionist. He is regarded for the development of a calorimeter and a spirometer used to determine oxygen consumption and measure metabolic rate. Also, his colleague Atwater and Benedict confirmed the validity of energy conservation in animal metabolism.
Background
Francis Gano Benedict was born on October 3, 1870, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. He was the son of Washington Gano Benedict, a businessman, and Harriet Emily Barrett, who were average middle-class parents with secondary-school backgrounds.
Education
After his parents moved in 1881 to Boston, Francis attended public high school there. He studied the piano and his parents planned a musical career for him. Meanwhile, he dabbled in his basement chemical laboratory.
Upon graduation (1888), Benedict devoted a year to the study of chemistry at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. He continued at Harvard University and received a Bachelor of Arts (1893) and Master of Arts (1894) in chemistry. An additional year at Heidelberg under Professor Victor Meyer led to the Ph.D., magna cum laude. In 1932 he received an honorary Doctor of Medicine by the University of Wiirzburg.
After receiving his Ph.D. degree, Benedict assisted W. O. Atwater at Wesleyan University, where he became a lecturer in chemistry in 1905 and professor in 1907. He supplemented his income through research as a chemist at the Storrs Agricultural Experimental Station (1896-1900) and as a physiological chemist for the Department of Agriculture (1895-1907).
Benedict applied his mechanical skill to the improvement of the apparatus used in these studies and the establishment of rigorous experimental controls. William Welch and John Shaw Billings were impressed with Benedict’s early publications on animal heat and metabolism, and they convinced the Carnegie Foundation trustees to establish a nutrition laboratory under Benedict’s direction. The result was the Boston Nutrition Laboratory, where Benedict remained until his retirement (1907-1937).
Benedict’s European affiliations were the result of his chosen field of research. The study of metabolism through calorimetry and the analysis of body intake and output was developed in the nineteenth century and was still current in Europe. In 1897, when Benedict joined him, Atwater prepared an exhaustive compilation of European contributions to the technique.
The concept “metabolism” was radically changing in the early decades of the twentieth century. The keys to energy transformation clearly lay within the emerging theories of hormonal control, catalysis, enzyme chemistry, and vitamins. Yet Benedict continued in the classic methods, perhaps because of his chemical rather than biological training. His acknowledgment of the newer methods shows neither enthusiasm nor personal conviction.
Benedict took care to distinguish between an organism’s loss of heat and production of heat. He began with the basic assumption that all animal tissue produces heat to the same degree (calories per kilogram body weight per unit time). He tested the assumption through extensive comparisons of various cold- and warm-blooded animals and searched for extremes to prove his point. The newborn, the young, the elderly, the obese, the thin, the dieter, the vegetarian, patients with overactive thyroids or one lung, diabetics, the tiniest mouse, even the elephant, came under his scrutiny.
By 1910 he realized that organisms do not produce heat in any simple, mechanical fashion. Large animals produced greater amounts of heat but small animals yielded more heat per unit of body weight. He remained steadfast, however, in the belief that homeostasis was maintained by heat loss, not heat production. Accurate data were his driving passion, and comparative physiology provided the basis for his judgments.
He established criteria of comparison for the variable rates of metabolism that he found: sex, age, condition, water content, and the idea that “active protoplasmic mass” differed from total body weight. Two standards of judging metabolic rates were available to him: the relation to body surface area and to body weight. Benedict unequivocally favored the latter.
Benedict equated science with progress and “the spirit of service” to humanity.
Membership
Francis Benedict was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1914), American Philosophical Society (1910), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1930), Society of American Magicians (1930), and honorary member of medical and scientific societies across Europe.
Personality
Benedict was known as the man of straightforward and eminently Victorian personality. He was against alcohol, trade unions, and the “decline” of culture. His friendships and professional associations were largely European. Magic tricks and the piano were his hobbies.
Interests
magic tricks, piano music
Connections
Francis Benedict was married to Cornelia Golay on July 28, 1897.