Biographical Memoirs Volume 91 (2009) / Chapter Skim
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CLIFFORD LADD PROSSER
CLIFFORD LADD PROSSER
Pages 242-257
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From page 242... ...
Photograph Courtesy of The University of Illinois Archives.
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From page 243... ...
Born in Avon, New York, in 1907, Ladd either witnessed the early development or, indeed, fostered the very conception of many of the core research areas still being actively studied by biologists who describe themselves as comparative, integrative, or evolutionary physiologists. Workers in this broad area of biological investigation thus owe a major debt to Ladd Prosser, whose curiosity about nature led him to ask penetrating questions that continue to challenge and motivate us.
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. Although I am not an alumnus of Ladd Prosser's laboratory, I had the privilege of working with him for several weeks on board the research ship Alpha Helix during the Bering Sea expedition in 1968.
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One of his Ph.D. students, Linda Mantel, commented in her tribute to Ladd, "Scientists with Ladd's vision and breadth of interests aren't made any more, and we are all poorer for that." FORMATIVE INFLUENCES: FROM WALKS IN THE WOODS TO POSTDOCTORAL STUDY Ladd's Scientific Autobiography and Personal Memoir (Prosser et al., 2001)
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From page 246... ...
At Harvard Ladd studied principally with Hallowel Davis but also interacted closely with other giants in the field of physiology, notably Walter Cannon and Alexander Forbes. The Harvard period saw Ladd further develop his investigations of neurobehavioral phenomena, this time using crayfish as his model system.
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An important component of Ladd's experiences during his periods at Harvard and Johns Hopkins was the summers spent at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There he furthered his interests in comparative biology, developed a love of summer retreats to this intellectual epicenter, and in 1934 met his future wife, Hazel Blanchard, who worked in the MBL library.
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From page 248... ...
Ladd insisted that he also be allowed to teach a new course of his own design in comparative physiology. This course was to serve as a focus for his development of a synthetic view of comparative physiology that resulted in the publication of his Comparative Animal Physiology, which evolved through four editions (1950, 1961, 1973, 1991)
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Despite the altered focus of his scientific work during the Second World War, Ladd's interests in comparative physiology remained strong. He began to envision a textbook in comparative physiology that would serve a number of purposes.
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His studies included major contributions to the following areas: invertebrate neurobiology; the comparative physiology of muscle, especially the electrical activity and rhythmicity of smooth muscle; temperature physiology, notably the phenotypic plasticity that marks acclimation to different
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In my own area of specialization, thermal physiology, the publications that Ladd wrote with graduate student and postdoctoral colleagues like Andrew Cossins, Jeff Hazel, and Bruce Sidell are landmark papers that helped to define the field. His lab truly was the epicenter of the study of thermal acclimation, and much current work on the molecular details of this process can trace its origins to the questions and publications that originated in Ladd's laboratory at the University of Illinois.
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in 1994. During his retirement, Ladd completed a further edition of Comparative Animal Physiology, in 1991, and his synthetic book, Adaptational Physiology: Molecules to Organisms, in 1986.
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clifford ladd prosser 253 its proper evolutionary context. His pleasure in studying evolution reflects Charles Darwin's belief that there is indeed "grandeur in this view of life." The view of life that Ladd presented to us taught us enormous amounts about physiological evolution and about the human qualities that most ensure the enjoyable and productive exploration of nature's marvelous diversity.
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Ladd Prosser. Fall Newsletter: Division of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry -- The Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology.
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26:337-382. 1947 The clinical sequence of physiological effects of ionizing radiation in animals.
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33:36-45. 1973 Comparative Animal Physiology.
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Correlations between behavioral temperature adaptations in goldfish and the viscosity and fatty acid composition of their synaptosomal membranes.
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