Lawrence J(oseph) Henderson

Biochemist and physiologist, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA. He spent his career as a research physician at Harvard (1904–42). His quantitative measurements of bodily buffer systems (1907–10) were expanded logarithmically by Danish biochemist K A Hasselbach to produce the Henderson–Hasselbach equation describing acid-base equilibria. He founded the department of physical chemistry at Harvard (1920), and established Harvard's Fatigue Laboratory (1927) to study chemical changes due to environmentally induced stress. Further investigations of oxygen-carbon dioxide exchanges in blood led to his seminal book, Blood: A Study in General Physiology (1928). A philosopher and scholar with varied interests, he related Vilfredo Pareto's classic writings on sociology to his own homeostatic approach to the buffering capability of the blood, and his lectures on Pareto influenced numerous young sociologists.

He became one of the leading biochemists of the first decades of the 20th century after the USA had just entered the World War II.

Lawrence Henderson graduated from Harvard College in 1898 and from Harvard Medical School in 1902, receiving the M. Then followed two years in chemical research at the University of Strasbourg (then Germany) with advanced scientific training in Franz Hofmeister's physiological laboratory. He became professor of biological chemistry, and later professor of chemistry, in Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was also introduced into philosophy and sociology by faculty members of Harvard University. He established some institutes in Harvard, especially the Fatigue Laboratory for physiological and sociological research on fatigue with the support of the Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Medical School, and he became the director.

Henderson investigated acid-base regulation (1906-1920).

In his classical book The Fitness of the Environment (1913) we find "an inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter" (Henderson). He concluded: "the whole evolutionary process, both cosmic and organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric."

As a sociologist (1932-1942) he applied the functionalism of physiological regulation to the phenomena of social behavior basing on his concept of social systems. In contrast to Pareto, Henderson applied the concept of social systems to all disciplines that study the meanings communicated in interactions between two or more persons acting in roles or role-sets. Henderson influenced many Harvard sociologists, especially Talcott Parsons, George C.

Henderson's investigations had their inception and consummation in the philosopher's chair. his career was largely devoted to the study of the organization of the organism, the universe, and society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London, 1917 (French edition in 1924), Blood. Yale University Press, New Haven, and Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, London, 1928 (French edition in 1931, German edition in 1932), Pareto's General Sociology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1935. by Bernard Barber, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1970.