16 Facts About Maurice Visscher

1.

Maurice Bolks Visscher was an American cardiovascular physiologist.

2.

Maurice Visscher is best known for demonstrating that cardiac muscle declines in efficiency as it fails, and for pioneering the use of isotopes to study electrolyte absorption in the small intestine.

3.

Maurice Visscher was the fourth of six children in a Dutch Calvinist family.

4.

Maurice Visscher attended Holland's Hope College, graduating in 1922, then studied physiology at the University of Minnesota where he earned a Ph.

5.

Maurice Visscher spent the next year doing research at the University of London with Ernest Starling.

6.

Maurice Visscher was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee from 1927 to 1929.

7.

Maurice Visscher joined the faculty of University of Southern California, where he was associate professor and chair of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology from 1929 to 1931.

8.

Maurice Visscher then served as the chairman of the physiology department at the University of Illinois College of Medicine until 1936, when he became the head of the physiology department at the University of Minnesota, a position he held until his retirement.

9.

Maurice Visscher then moved to another laboratory, where he continued to conduct research until his death.

10.

Maurice Visscher was the 20th president of the American Physiological Society, serving from 1948 to 1949.

11.

Maurice Visscher was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1956, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964, and the American Philosophical Society in 1970.

12.

Maurice Visscher served as a co-founder and president of the National Society for Medical Research, as secretary general of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, and as founding chairman of the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.

13.

An outspoken humanist, Maurice Visscher contributed a regular column to The Humanist from 1942 to 1954 and signed the Humanist Manifesto II in 1973.

14.

Maurice Visscher served as chairman of the organization Minnesotans against the War in Vietnam, which placed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 1967.

15.

Maurice Visscher was an avid defender of academic freedom and opponent of McCarthyism.

16.

Maurice Visscher was a volunteer medical advisor to Group Health in the 1950s.