ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Seeking the Master Switch: Per Scholander and Cold War Marine Physiology

• In Event: New Histories of Cold War Scientific Exchange

English Abstract

This paper traces early developments in marine physiology, examining the work of Norwegian-born physiologist Per Scholander (1905–1980), whose research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography bridged biological studies of human adaptation and marine mammal diving.
Scholander’s early fieldwork in the Arctic focused on human physiological responses to cold and hypoxia—research that had military applications when he joined his mentor Larry Irving in the US Air Force Physiological Laboratory during the Second World War. Later, at Scripps in the 1950s and 1960s, Scholander continued this line of research in experimental studies of diving marine mammals, seeking universal biological principles for mammalian pressure tolerance and oxygen storage.
Examining Scholander’s human studies and marine mammal experiments, this paper reveals novel approaches to physiological research at a moment when the human relation to the marine environment, and possibilities of human physiological and mechanically assisted adaptability were being reconceived. Drawing on archival records from Scripps, I argue that Scholander’s comparative approach to physiology exemplifies mid-century marine science dependency upon cross-species and cross-cultural comparisons. His work sought to break down boundaries between laboratory and field work, between human and nonhuman subjects, as well as between scientific and indigenous (Australian Aborigines, Inuit, Fuegians, etc) sources of information.
In engaging the conference theme “Shifting Perspectives: Plural Worlds, Contested Sciences,” this paper positions Scholander’s research as a site where Cold War biomedicine, man-in-the-sea technology, and indigenous knowledge intersected—generating a pluralistic vision of physiology that redefined scientific understanding of life in extreme environments.

Author

• Antony Adler, Carleton College