Raymond Pearl

Raymond Pearl (born 3 June 1879 in Farmington, November 17, 1940 in Hershey) is an American biologist specializing in classical genetics and biometry, one of the founders of gerontology. For most of his adult life he worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He left behind (as a co-author) 841 scientific and popular publications on various topics.

Rather hobbyist still interested in eugenics. Quite unexpectedly, in 1927, he published The Biology of Superiority, which effectively cast doubt on the then fundamental assumptions of eugenics. The surprise was that the author was so far seen as determined by their supporters. His publication has shown contradictions of views and disproportionate proposed eugenic methods in relation to real-life populations of genetics. Raymond Pearl soon joined the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Problems and devoted more of his time to the genetics of the population, a developing new field of biology. Still, he was not averse to the eugenic environment, and he even gained the nickname racist and anti-Semite, even though he was an adviser to the Black Law Movement. In his work Pearl dealt with data collection, computation and statistics. In 1926 he founded The Quarterly Review of Biology. In 1932 he developed an equation for determining the effectiveness of contraceptives called Pearl's index. He was also interested in gerontology. Knowing the discovery of Max Rubner in 1908, who had noticed in mammals a weight-bearing relationship and a long-term metabolic rate, knowing that fruits at slower temperatures ripen slowly, so in worse conditions it must slow down and, knowing Alexis Carel's hypothesis that body cells do not age Pearl has created a new theory of aging. This theory, called life-theory, said that the cause of aging is age-related dysfunction of the body as a whole, which is conducive to faster metabolism and abundance. Pearle's theory backed by Harman Denham for the next 50 years has become the only theory of aging. It was finally overturned after a more thorough examination and comparison of rat biology with the bat. It turned out that bats, despite their lower body weight and comparable metabolic rate, live much longer than the rat. In his private life, Raymond Pearl did not bother with the conclusions of his own theory; he ate a lot and drank much of it, even in the US Prohibition. He was a frequent visitor to the Saturday Night Club. The result of this experience was the book Alcohol and Longevity, where it showed that regular drinking of alcohol is better than total abstinence or drinking in excess. In 1938, he demonstrated the harmful effects of smoking on health.

In November 1940 Pearl went to the local zoo. During the tour he felt bad and had to stop touring. A few hours later he was dead. Authoritative control (person):

wiki