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Lawrence Joseph Henderson

A sepia-toned portrait of Lawrence Joseph Henderson, an American biochemist and physiologist, wearing a suit and tie, with a serious expression and round glasses.

American biochemist and physiologist (1878–1942) at Harvard, who in 1908 worked out the equilibrium chemistry of the bicarbonate buffer system in blood. He also wrote The Fitness of the Environment (1913), an early argument that the chemical properties of water and carbon dioxide make terrestrial life possible. In later years he turned to sociology, founding Harvard's Pareto seminar, but the equation kept his name in every medical textbook.

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