James D. Hardy (physicist)

James Daniel Hardy (born August 11, 1904 in Georgetown (Texas) , † September 6, 1985 ) was an American physicist and physiologist.

Hardy's father founded and ran two military schools for boys in the southern states. He studied at Southwestern University in Georgetown and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi . In 1925 he received his master's degree and became an assistant professor. In 1928 he married Augusta Ewing Haugh. He continued his studies at Johns Hopkins University , where he received his doctorate in 1930 with a dissertation on a resonance radiometer according to AH Pfund . He was a post-graduate student at the University of Michigan. Originally he wanted to work in astrophysics, but due to the depression there were no vacancies and instead he was given the opportunity to research heat generation in the human body at the Russell Sage Institute for Pathology at New York Hospital. First he developed radiometers to measure the surface temperature of the skin and then examined the heat loss of the body through infrared radiation. At the same time he attended courses in the relevant medical subjects. From 1939 he investigated with the neurologist Harold G. Wolff (1898–1962) and the research doctor Helen Goodell the pain threshold for temperature sensation ( Dol unit 1947). They also used it to test analgesics. With both of them he published the book Pain sensations and reactions in 1952 . One finding was that the pain threshold mainly depends on the skin temperature, and only secondarily on the heat flow.

In World War II he volunteered for the US Navy and was reinstated as a physicist. As a senior officer, he was responsible for mine clearance before the major landing operations, for example in Sicily, Anzio and Normandy. For this he received the Purple Heart and the Legion of Merit . Even after his discharge from active service in 1946, he remained in the Navy reserve and became an admiral there in 1961.

From 1947 he was at Cornell University Medical College . Among other things, he researched the heat regulation of animals (role of the hypothalamus ), with dogs being found to be most similar to humans (not monkeys). In 1958, he and Lipkin created the first computer program for diagnoses (in their case, haematological diseases). In 1953 he became director of research at the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville , Pennsylvania and head of the centrifuge there, where astronauts were trained. He was also a professor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania .

In 1961 he became director of the John B. Pierce Foundation Laboratory in New Haven. He also became a professor at Yale University (physiology, later also public health). In 1974 he retired as director.

He received several honorary doctorates (including Lyon) and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1970) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1965).

His son James D. Hardy Jr. (* 1934) is a historian and professor at Louisiana State University.

literature

• Arthur B. Dubois: James Daniel Hardy 1904–1985, Biographical Memoirs Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 2006