Samuel Steen Maxwell

Samuel Steen Maxwell (August 4, 1860 - January 28, 1939) was born of Scots-Irish parentage at Manorcunningham, County Donegal, Ireland. He died in Berkeley, California.

Overview

Dr. Maxwell's ancestry has been traced to Max, son of Unwin, who settled near the Tweed in Scotland about 1160. His immediate family settled in the midwest of the United States when he was still a young boy.

After taking a B.S. degree at Amity College, Iowa, in 1886, he remained another three years at his alma mater, instructing first in mathematics, later in natural science, and in the meantime working for an M.S., which was awarded him in 1888. Summers were devoted to instruction in the Iowa Teachers' Institutes. He married Lula Beatrice Taylor, of Lovelaceville, Kentucky, on June 30, 1887.

A year of graduate work at Johns Hopkins in 1889-90 was followed by a professorship in biology at Monmouth College, Illinois. Here he remained for the next twelve years, except for an interval of two years spent in graduate work under Jacques Loeb at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1896. His thesis on the physiology of the annelid brain was published in Pflüger's Archiv. For two years Monmouth College was without a president, and during this period Dr. Maxwell served on the board of administration, and at the same time the edited the college magazine.

In 1902 he left the midwest on a fellowship in physiology at the Harvard Medical School and remained on for two years as instructor. In 1902, Loeb left Chicago for the Far West to head the division of physiology at the University of California. The rooms assigned to him in old East Hall were inadequate for the school of experimental physiology which Loeb wished to establish, but when the Spreckels Physiological Laboratory was built on a knoll overlooking the beautiful Faculty Glade, it was equipped with special aquaria for experimentation on marine invertebrates, and there was space enough for mammalian experiments and biochemistry as well. Dr. Martin Fisher, one of Loeb's pupils, had come with him from Chicago to serve as instructor, and when Fisher accepted the professorship of pathology at the Oakland College of Medicine and Surgery in 1905, Dr. Maxwell was brought from Harvard to take his place.

Maxwell remained at the University for the rest of his life, rising gradually from instructor to professor. When Loeb went to the Rockefeller Institute in 1910, biochemistry was split off from physiology and Dr. Maxwell was made chairman of the division of physiology. Except for an interval of four years, he continued to hold this position until his retirement.

At the time of Maxwell's arrival in California the activity in Loeb's laboratory was intense. The subject upon which all the workers were concentrating their attention was temperature coefficients of physiological reactions. Martin Fisher had investigated the effect of heat on the beat of the crab's heart, and Theodore Burnett, at that time a volunteer in the laboratory, was assisting Loeb in similar experiments on the rate of conduction of the nerve impulse in the huge garden slugs found on the campus. For this purpose Loeb had had an expert machinist construct an elaborate piece of apparatus of polished brass and ebonite, which, unfortunately, proved useless. Loeb in disgust turned the problem over to Maxwell as soon as he arrived. Maxwell soldered a few wires to a discarded candy tin, and solved the problem in short order. This was typical of his experimental methods. Simple, homemade gadgets to supplement the ordinary physiological apparatus in his hands brought results/

Dr. Maxwell's early papers were along lines similar to Loeb's, as for example, the effect of salts on ciliary activity, chemical stimulants of the cerebral hemispheres, etc. He wrote a popular article on Loeb's experiments in chemical fertilization, and with Loeb wrote on heliotropism in plants and animals. Dr. Maxwell's publications also included an article, "Tyrant Nature," in the August 1903 issue of Harper's Magazine, on the subject of crustaceans.

It was, however, not until 1919 that he began the work on the labyrinth with which his name is always associated. Loeb founded the Journal of General Physiology in 1918, and in the second volume appeared two articles by Dr. Maxwell, (1) “Comparison of the Otolith Organs and of the Semicircular Canals”; (2) “The Mechanism of the Dynamic Functions of the Labyrinth.” This was the beginning of a series of papers which in 1923 were summed up in his book Labyrinth and Equilibrium in the series of monographs on experimental biology sponsored by Loeb, Morgan, and Osterhout. This was the first, and for some time, the only volume on vestibular function in English. The conclusions drawn were based almost entirely on experiments on the dogfish, but by inference they have been considered to apply to mammals and have been incorporated in many texts of physiology for medical students. Until 1930, when Creed translated Canus's "The Physiology of the Vestibular Apparatus", Maxwell's book was the authority on this subject.

Shortly after his retirement Dr. Maxwell suffered partial paralysis which affected both speech and muscular movements. However, he made fairly good recovery and for several years was able to go about with the use of a cane, and his speech, although slow, had suffered no other impairment. Death was caused by a second stroke.

Maxwell's name will always be associated with that of Loeb in the scientific work which came out of the Spreckels Physiological Laboratory of the University of California during the early years of this century and for his painstaking experiments on the inner ear of the dogfish.