A very brief history of respiratory biology

Abstract

A better understanding of what life is and how living organisms function has always been of crucial importance to humans, but ‘biology’ as a scientific discipline is quite young, the term being coined around 1800. Similarly, ‘respiratory biology’ as a discrete branch of biology is much younger and even today the term is not commonly used. However, the knowledge about life and the discovery and study of respiration as parts of other disciplines accumulated as a mosaic over the centuries. Some of the most important persons and their primary achievements in the field that we now call respiratory biology are summarized in this chapter.