Background
Wilbur Olin Atwater was born on May 3, 1844, in Johnsburg, New York, the son of William Warren Atwater, a Methodist clergyman, and Eliza Barnes Atwater.
Inside the Atwater-Benedict human calorimeter. The calorimeter aided studies in food analysis, dietary evolution, work energy consumption, and digestible foods. It measured the human metabolism balance by analyzing the heat produced and metabolic rate by a person performing certain physical activities.
Wilbur Olin Atwater, 1844 – 1907, American chemist known for his studies of human nutrition and metabolism.
Atwater's scientific lab.
Cycle ergometer used by Atwater and his colleague Benedict in their studies on exercise metabolism.
Dr. Wilbur Olin Atwater
Wilbur Olin Atwater graduation portrait.
In 1898 Atwater was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal, the highest award given by the Franklin Institute.
Atwater pursued an undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
In 1868, Atwater's interest in civil engineering and agricultural chemistry led him to enroll in Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School.
(Originally published in 1898. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1898. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
https://www.amazon.com/Dietary-Studies-York-City-1895/dp/1112336249/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(Excerpt from Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem,...)
Excerpt from Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem, Vol. 2 This instance is cited to Show how difficult it may be to detect a spurious article. The Peru balsam in these quantities is not a dangerous by-product, - not as much so as others present in cognacs made by the usual processes. As a rule the artificial cognacs of France compare well with the natural product in respect to their content Of higher alcohols, etc. Where state supervision is lax, flavoring products, coloring matters, etc., more harmful than those found in natural bever ages are no doubt often introduced. One of the chief dangers lies in the introduction Of an excess Of the higher and more toxic alcohols when badly rectified spirit is used in making up a spurious article.
https://www.amazon.com/Physiological-Aspects-Problem-Classic-Reprint/dp/1527877787/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(Excerpt from The Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition: The Co...)
Excerpt from The Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition: The Composition of Our Bodies and Our Food When we know what are the kinds and amounts of nutritive substances our bodies need and our food-materials contain, then and not till then shall we be able to adjust our diet to the demands of health and purse. The ways in which the body makes use of its food are found out.by experiments made with living animals, with pigeons, geese, rab bits, dogs, sheep, goats, oxen, horses and many others, including men. The experimenting of the last few years, particularly, has been very ex tensive, and has brought extremely important results.
https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Foods-Nutrition-Composition-Classic/dp/0260125784/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(Excerpt from The Chemical Composition of American Food Ma...)
Excerpt from The Chemical Composition of American Food Materials In collating the material for the present compilation we have used the results of over unpublished analyses by ourselves and asso ciates. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.
https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Composition-American-Materials-Classic/dp/1528319826/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(Excerpt from Dietary Studies With Reference to the Food o...)
Excerpt from Dietary Studies With Reference to the Food of the Negro in Alabama in 1895 and 1896: Conducted With the Cooperation of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama The immediate purpose in conducting an inquiry into the food of the colored population of the Southern States was to obtain informa tion as to the kinds, amounts, and composition of the food materials used. The ulterior purpose was to get light upon the hygienic and pecuniary economy of their diet, its deficiencies, the ways in which it might be improved, and the steps which should be taken to bring about an improvement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.
https://www.amazon.com/Dietary-Studies-Reference-Negro-Alabama/dp/1333640161/?tag=2022091-20
2018
agriculturist chemist physiologist scientist
Wilbur Olin Atwater was born on May 3, 1844, in Johnsburg, New York, the son of William Warren Atwater, a Methodist clergyman, and Eliza Barnes Atwater.
Wilbur Atwater studied for two years at the University of Vermont and received his bachelor’s degree at Wesleyan College in 1865. Interested in both agriculture and chemistry, he then went for postgraduate work to Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School, where he studied under the chemist Samuel W. Johnson, a Leipzig graduate and America’s leading authority on agricultural chemistry. Atwater earned his doctorate in 1869, with a thesis on the analysis of the composition of several varieties of American maize.
After earning his doctorate in 1869, Wilbur Atwater then spent two years at Leipzig and Berlin. After brief teaching periods at the University of Tennessee and Maine State College, in 1873 he was appointed professor of chemistry at Wesleyan, a position he held until his death.
In 1875 the Connecticut legislature - with the encouragement and financial aid of agricultural editor Orange Judd - established America’s first agricultural experiment station, patterned largely after German stations, institutions admired by both Johnson and Atwater. The establishment of the station was a goal to which Johnson had been dedicated since the mid-1850s. From 1875 until 1877, the station was at Middletown and under Atwater’s direction. In 1877 it moved to New Haven and the guidance of Johnson. Like most of his contemporary agricultural chemists, Atwater became increasingly involved in fertilizer investigation and testing, using this work partly as a means of gaining agricultural support for scientific research generally. (In the course of it he was able to demonstrate independently the role of leguminous plants in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen.) Even after the directorship of the Connecticut station had passed into Johnson’s hands, Atwater continued to organize fertilizer experiments and to write regularly for farm readers on the application of science to agriculture.
In 1887, with the passage of the Hatch Act, a measure providing federal funds for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station in each state, Atwater was appointed a chief of the Office of Experiment Stations, established within the United States Department of Agriculture to oversee and coordinate the work of the state experiment stations. Although he occupied this post for only two years - during which he continued his academic duties at Wesleyan - Atwater exerted a decisive influence on administrative policy in regard to the stations. His basic policies were elaborated and implemented through the next quarter century by his successor, A. C. True, a Wesleyan classicist who depended heavily on Atwater’s advice. The influence of True and Atwater upon the development of agricultural research in the United States was both positive and surprisingly pervasive, extending to many aspects of basic biological investigation.
In 1887 Atwater also visited Europe, where at Munich he became deeply interested in the calorimetric work of Carl Voit and Max Rubner. On his return to Wesleyan, Atwater sought the aid of E. B. Rosa, his physicist colleague, in the design and construction of what came to be called the Atwater-Rosa calorimeter. Begun in 1892, the calorimeter was in operation by 1897 (preliminary studies had appeared in 1896). Atwater was concerned not only with metabolism as a problem in physiology but also with the use of his new techniques for the determination of improved dietary standards for the working class, standards that might prescribe a diet providing optimum food value at lowest cost. An adroit manipulator of political and business support, Atwater was able to demonstrate the value of such nutritional investigations to the Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives, which in 1894 began to support nutrition research (a program directed by Atwater until his death). Graham Lusk, Francis Benedict, and H. P. Armsby were among the other American students of metabolism who used Atwater’s calorimetric techniques.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, calorimetric work had become an extremely popular, almost fashionable field, with broad implications for public policy and popular health education. It is ironic that the total impact of Atwater’s nutrition work was somewhat clouded: his emphasis on caloric values - in the absence of knowledge of vitamin and amino acid requirements - led to recommendations that the working class purchase carbohydrates and avoid such “luxuries” as green vegetables. Vigorous though Atwater’s scientific work was, his greatest contribution to the development of science in the United States was organizational and administrative - especially his efforts to establish scientific standards for experiment station research. Indeed, his forcefulness in such matters provided an occasional source of disquietude to certain of his colleagues and his career was marked at times by friction with contemporaries.
He died on September 22, 1907, at the age of 63 in Middletown, Connecticut, but his pioneering work was carried on by a Wesleyan co-researcher named Francis Benedict.
(Excerpt from Dietary Studies With Reference to the Food o...)
2018(Excerpt from The Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition: The Co...)
2017(Excerpt from The Chemical Composition of American Food Ma...)
2017(Excerpt from Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem,...)
2012(Originally published in 1898. This volume from the Cornel...)
2009The sensitive balance scales Atwater used in his metabolic studies.
Inside the Atwater-Benedict human calorimeter. This machine recorded the amount of energy obtained from various foods. Students were commonly used as live subjects. They slept in the calorimeter, studied in it, or rode a bicycle in it. Sometimes they drank alcoholic beverages in it, in the cause of science.
Before Atwater's development of the respiration calorimeter, many experiments on calorie intake and expenditure had been conducted on animals. During this period, there was a widely held belief that the first law of thermodynamics applied to animals, but did not apply to humans because they were unique. Atwater demonstrated that whatever amount of consumed energy humans cannot use is left over and stored in the body. His findings thus established that the first law applied to humans as well as animals. Atwater's research and conclusions in this regard changed both how people thought about science and about humans.
Quotations:
"Food may be defined as material which, when taken into the body, serves to either form tissue or yield energy, or both. This definition includes all the ordinary food materials, since they both build tissue and yield energy. It includes sugar and starch, because they yield energy and form fatty tissue. It includes alcohol, because the latter is burned to yield energy, though it does not build tissue. It excludes creatin, creatininin, and other so-called nitrogeneous extractives of meat, and likewise thein or caffein of tea and coffee, because they neither build tissue nor yield energy, although they may, at times, be useful aids to nutrition."
"It is a fair question whether the results of these things have induced among us in a large class of well-to-do people, with little muscular activity, a habit of excessive eating [particularly fats and sweets] and may be responsible for great damage to health, to say nothing of the purse."