Max Rubner (2 June 1854,
Munich27 April 1932,
Berlin) was a German
physiologist
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
and
hygienist
Hygiene is a series of practices performed to preserve health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases." Personal hygiene refer ...
.
Academic career
He studied at the
University of Munich and worked as an assistant under
Adolf von Baeyer and
Carl von Voit (doctorate 1878). Later on, he taught as a
professor at the
University of Marburg (1885–1891), and in 1891 succeeded
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the Vibrio ...
as a professor of hygiene at the
University of Berlin. In 1909 he succeeded
Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann as chair of physiology at Berlin. Rubner was co-founder of the ''
Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie'', and became its director in 1913. With his assistant Gerhard Albrecht, Rubner set out to study labour not just as the expenditure of energy, but also the use of intellect. They rejected
taylorism as being over concerned with economic outputs, but rather advocated an approach which was more concerned with a biophysical approach to the elimination of fatigue.
Contributions
Rubner is remembered for his research in
metabolism, energy physiology, hygiene and dietary
thermogenesis. His best-known research centres on what he termed the "isodynamic law" of
calorie
The calorie is a unit of energy. For historical reasons, two main definitions of "calorie" are in wide use. The large calorie, food calorie, or kilogram calorie was originally defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of on ...
s (demonstrated in 1873, and published a decade later), according to which the form of human calorie intake is irrelevant to its effect on energy balance, often paraphrased as "a calorie is a calorie". In 1902, Rubner expressed his belief that this was over-simplistic, stating "the effect of specific nutritional substances upon the glands" may modify the effect of specific foods on energy balance, a view that is now increasingly accepted. With
Otto Heubner (1843–1926), he performed important studies involving
energy metabolism in infancy.
In 1883 Rubner introduced the "surface hypothesis", which stated that the
metabolic rate of birds and mammals that maintain a steady body temperature is roughly proportional to their body surface area.
Eckert animal physiology
by David J. Randall, Warren W. Burggren, Kathleen French, Roger Eckert
Max Rubner is also known for his "rate-of-living theory", which proposed that a slow metabolism increases an animal's longevity. His observation was that larger animals outlived smaller animals and that the metabolic rates of larger animals were slower ''pro rata''. The theory might have been inspired by the Industrial Revolution by the logic that the more a machine is worked, the sooner it will wear out.
References
Further reading
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External links
Rubner, Max (1854–1932) -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography
at scienceworld.wolfram.com
Short biography and bibliography
in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubner, Max
1854 births
1932 deaths
German physiologists
Hygienists
Physicians from Munich
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
Academic staff of the University of Marburg
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Max Planck Institute directors