Chauncey Depew Leake (September 5, 1896 – January 11, 1978) was an American pharmacologist, medical historian and ethicist. Leake received a bachelor's degree with majors in
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
,
chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
, and
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
. He received his M.S. (1920) and Ph.D. (1923) from the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
in pharmacology and physiology.
Leake was born in
Elizabeth, New Jersey
Elizabeth is a City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Union County, New Jersey, Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Karl Koller.
Leake married the microbiologist Elisabeth Wilson in 1921, and they collaborated for many years. They had two sons and remained married until her death in 1977.
Leake discovered the anesthetic divinyl ether. One of his publications was a translation of the 1628 physiological work '' De motu cordis'' (''On the Motion of the Heart'') from Latin to English.
Leake became a fulltime university administrator from 1942, first at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and from 1962 at Ohio State University.
In 1973, Leake was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.
He was awarded the UCSF medal in 1975.
A collection of his papers is held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
References
Literature
* Robinson, Victor: ''Victory Over Pain: A History of Anaesthesia'' (1947).