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Living History of Physiology
 Elsworth
Buskirk
August 11, 1929 -
Elsworth R. Buskirk received a B.A. in biology and physical education
from St. Olaf College, a master's degree in physical education from the
University of Minnesota, and, in 1954, a Ph.D. in physiology, also from the
University of Minnesota. After completing his Ph.D., Buskirk worked as chief
of the Environmental Physiology Section at the Quartermaster Research and
Development Center in Natick, Massachusetts. From 1957 to 1963, he held the
position of research physiologist at the National Institutes of Health, and,
in 1963, he became a faculty member in the Department of Physiology at the
Pennsylvania State University.
Throughout his career, Buskirk did research in many different areas of
applied physiology and human nutrition including a brief period in which he
studied the physiological effects of high altitude on athletes. In 1965,
Buskirk, J. Kollias, E. Picon-Reatigue, R. Akers, E. Prokop, and Paul Baker
conducted their study, "Physiology and Performance of Track Athletes at
Various Altitudes in the United States and Peru." Buskirk's work along with
several related concurrent research projects on the physiological effects of
altitude flourished because of increased interest in applying high altitude
studies to aerospace medicine in the 1950s and 1960s, and because of growing
concern about the training to give US athletes to prepare them for the 1968
Olympic Games scheduled in Mexico City.
Buskirk and his associates hypothesized that hypoxia and training of
track athletes at high altitudes would improve running performance and
maximal oxygen uptake upon return to lower altitudes. To test this
hypothesis, they studied the athletic performance and physiology of six male
collegiate track athletes from the Pennyslvania State University at various
locations and altitudes including: Nunoa, Peru 13,000 feet); Mount Evans,
Colorado (14,200 feet); Adams State College, Alamosa, Colorado (7,500 feet);
the National Jewish Hospital, Denver, Colorado (5,200 feet); and the
Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania (900 feet). At
these various locations, Buskirk and his associates tested athletic
performance through time trials of running events and through measuring the
time of sustained bicycle riding. They also tracked the following
physiological parameters: hematocrit, hemoglobin, plasma and blood volume,
total body water, ventilation, maximal oxygen uptake, maximal heart rate,
oxygen pulse, and oxygen debt. In discussing their results, Buskirk and his
associates found that training at high altitude "had no deleterious effects
on subsequent performance at lower altitudes." They also noted that "there
is also the suggestion that certain runners may perform in a superior
fashion following return from altitude for reasons that are not clear." They
presented the results of this work in March of 1966 at the International
Symposium on the Effects of Altitude on Physical Performance, co-sponsored
by the United States Olympic Committee, the Lovelace Foundation for Medical
Education and Research, and the University of New Mexico.
Elsworth R. Buskirk is a member of several professional and scholarly
associations and is currently an emeritus professor of applied physiology
and human nutrition at the Pennsylvania State University.
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