Authors:
- Offers surprising insights into the author's animated and varied life
- Gives a summary of two whole Himalaya expeditions
- Explains the author's part in an extensive space program
Part of the book series: Springer Biographies (SPRINGERBIOGS)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
About this book
This book is an informal autobiography by John West MD PhD. He obtained his medical degree in Adelaide, Australia and then spent 15 years mainly at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital in London where he, with others, used radioactive oxygen-15 to make the first description of the uneven regional distribution of blood flow in the lung.
In 1960-1961, he was a member of the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition led by Sir Edmund Hillary who had made the first ascent of Mt Everest 7 years before. During the expedition about 6 scientists spent up to three months at an altitude of 5800 m studying the effects of this very high altitude on human physiology.
Because of his interests in the effects of gravity on the lung, Dr. West spent a year at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California in 1967-1968. While there he submitted a proposal to NASA to measure pulmonary function of astronauts in space, and thiswas funded. Later, in 1981 he organized the American Medical Research Expedition to Everest during which the first measurements of human physiology on the summit, altitude 8848 m, were obtained. In the 1990’s, Dr. West’s team made the first comprehensive measurements of pulmonary function of astronauts in space using SpaceLab which was taken up in the Shuttle.
Authors and Affiliations
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School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA
John B. West
About the author
Dr. West's research interests are broad with an emphasis on the physiology of pulmonary gas exchange. He has also worked on the bird lung, pulmonary bleeding in racehorses, and the effects of snorkeling in elephants. His honors include membership of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has received honorary doctorates from universities in Athens, Barcelona and Ferrara.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Breathing on the Roof of the World
Book Subtitle: Memoir of a Respiratory Physiologist
Authors: John B. West
Series Title: Springer Biographies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7122-0
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4939-7121-3Published: 28 June 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4939-8391-9Published: 28 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4939-7122-0Published: 27 June 2017
Series ISSN: 2365-0613
Series E-ISSN: 2365-0621
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 156
Number of Illustrations: 30 b/w illustrations, 37 illustrations in colour
Topics: Human Physiology, History of Science, Sport Science, Pneumology/Respiratory System, Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics)