William Francis Ganong, Jr.

Who was William Francis Ganong, Jr.?

William Francis Ganong, Jr. was a Harvard-educated American physiologist, and was one of the first scientists to trace how the brain controls important internal functions of the body. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, the son of renowned botanist and Smith College professor, William Francis Ganong, Sr..

He was a graduate of Harvard Medical School and served with the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War in which he was part of a medical team that established a MASH unit, the Hemorrhagic Fever Center.

A neuroendocrinologist, he was the Lange Professor of Physiology Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco and served as the 50th president of The American Physiological Society, from 1977 to 1978. In the course of his research, he discovered that blood pressure and fluid balance — the salt and water levels in the body — are regulated by hormones from the adrenal gland and the kidney, a key finding for developing ways to treat hypertension. He was also one of the discoverers of Lown-Ganong-Levine syndrome, an electrical abnormality that affects heart rhythm.

He was the author of the book Review of Medical Physiology, first published in 1963 and currently in its 24th edition and has been translated into 18 languages.