John Pappenheimer

Who was John Pappenheimer?

Dr. John Richard Pappenheimer was the George Higginson Professor of Physiology at Harvard University and the thirty-seventh president of the American Physiological Society from 1964 until 1965.

He contributed to a wide range of disciplines within physiology: capillary permeability, respiratory physiology, blood-brain-CSF transport, the neurochemical aspects of sleep, and most recently to the understanding of the absorption of sugars and amino acids in the intestine.

He was the final of three children born to Alwin Max Pappenheimer, Sr., a distinguished pathologist on the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and Beatrice Pappenheimer. His siblings were Dr. Alwin Max Pappenheimer, Jr. and Anne Pappenheimer Forbes. He married Helena Palmer in 1949 and they would have two sons, the artist Will Pappenheimer and Rick, and one daughter, Rosamond Pappenheimer Zimmermann.