Atwater

Atwater William (William Olin Atwater; 1844-1907) (incorrectly Atwater), the famous American physiologist; an outstanding researcher in the field of nutrition and metabolism and energy exchange. While on a foreign mission, he studied (1869-71) chemistry and physiology in Berlin and Leipzig and became closely acquainted with the work of experimental agricultural stations, particularly in Mockern near Leipzig, the first in time of foundation (1853) in Germany. Upon returning to America, he took an active part in organizing analogous stations in America and was the director of the first station organized by him (1875) in Middletown in Connecticut. In 1887 he worked at Fonte in Munich, and from 1888 he became the first director of the Division of Experiment Stations of the US Department of Agriculture and directed them on the basis of the following principle: "the future of these stations depends on how well they manage to discover permanent values, and this can be achieved through the most abstract and profound research. The forgetting of this will be fatal." In 1891, under the influence of Rubner's calorimetric researches, Atwater began, together with the physicist Rose, the construction of a respiratory calorimeter for humans and completed it in 1897. With the help of this calorimeter, Atwater with his collaborators extended Rubner's data to humans, proving the agreement between the observed and calculated heat loss based on the heat of combustion of substances destroyed in the body, i.e. the applicability of the law of conservation of energy to humans. Atwater summarized his works in the article; "Neue Versuche iiber Stoff- und Kraftwechsel im menschli; hen Korper", Erg. d. Physiologie, Abt. 1, 1904. A distinguished student of Atwater working in the same field is Benedict.