Papers of Ulrich Cameron Luft, research physiologist and physician. Luft was an authority in the fields of lung physiology and acclimatization to high altitude.
Ulrich Cameron Luft Papers, 1907-1991 (MSS 475)
Restrictions: Films in Series 4: EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH MATERIAL and Series 6: HIGH ALITITUDE EXPEDITIONS
are restricted. A DVD viewing copy, located in Box 32, is available in place of the
films. Original materials deemed too fragile for use are restricted. User copies must
be used in place of these materials.
Extent: 19.8 Linear feet (38 archives boxes, 11 card file boxes, 1 records carton, 4 oversize folders, and 1 art bin item)
The son of a Scottish mother and German father, Ulrich Cameron Luft was born in Berlin on April 25, 1910. He studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Berlin, 1929-1935. After a year as an intern, he was licensed as a physician and in 1937 completed a doctoral thesis on the physiological effects of oxygen deprivation.
Luft took part in the 1937 and 1938 German mountaineering expeditions to Nanga Parbat in the western Himalayas as research physiologist and team physician. Impressed with the stamina of the Sherpa guides, he realized there were adaptive mechanisms that could be studied. He collected data on the climbers, noting that tolerance to altitude increased over time and that this acquired tolerance persisted after descent. This effect was important in the unpressurized aircraft of the time and would become of vital importance during World War II.
Returning to Germany, Luft joined the Luftfahrtmedizinische Forschungsinstitut (Aero-Medical Research Institute) in Berlin as head of its altitude physiology laboratory. He was drafted for military service in 1939 and spent three months in training, then returned to civilian status as a researcher. In 1941 he married a colleague, Alice Hentzelt, and the following year he was elected to the faculty at the University of Berlin. The requirements of military aviation focused Luft's research on rapid decompression, diffusing capacity of the lungs and duration of consciousness at altitude. He was also a consultant to the German military on thermal stress and nutrition.
The university and institute were closed when the war ended, and Luft started a private medical practice. When the university reopened he was asked to become Acting Director of the Physiology Department. In April, 1947, Col. Harry Armstrong of the U.S. Air Force offered Luft a research appointment at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas. The offer was made under "Operation Paperclip," a program to bring German scientists to the United States.
Luft was a researcher at the School until 1954, when he was asked by Randolph Lovelace to head the Department of Physiology at the Lovelace Clinic for Medical Education and Research in New Mexico. His research interests continued to center around the effect of oxygen deficiency on body tissues, leading to his contributions in a variety of fields: pulmonary disease, exercise tolerance, oxygen equipment design, and the testing and selection of the first Project Mercury astronauts in the early days of the NASA space program.
A productive researcher and teacher with an extensive publication list and enduring ties with his former students, Luft received many awards and was honored with a symposium after his retirement in 1980.
Ulrich Luft died on November 23, 1991, at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Papers of Ulrich Cameron Luft, research physiologist and physician. Luft was an authority in the fields of lung physiology and acclimatization to high altitude. The collection contains correspondence, much of it related to Luft's research interests; published and unpublished writings by Luft and others from the 1930s through the 1980s; Luft's experimental and reference files containing notes, calculations, graphs and illustrations; photographs of Luft, his colleagues and family; photographs and slides of equipment and people in research settings; and, medical instruments.
Arranged in nine series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) WRITINGS BY ULRICH LUFT, 4) EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH MATERIAL, 5) TEACHING MATERIAL, 6) HIGH ALTITUDE EXPEDITIONS, 7) WRITINGS OF OTHERS, 8) MEDICAL APPARATUS, and 9) ORIGINALS OF PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPIES.
Four series contain material reflecting Luft's personal and professional life in Germany. The BIOGRAPHICAL series includes family and personal documents issued in pre-war, wartime and post-war Germany; Luft's WRITINGS series contains copies of most of his own work, published and unpublished, in the period 1936-1944; the WRITINGS OF OTHERS includes published and unpublished work of colleagues from these same years and earlier. The core of the HIGH ALTITUDE EXPEDITION series is formed by his Nanga Parbat files. Many of the items in these four series are in German.
The material dated after his arrival in the United States in 1947 reflects his career as researcher, teacher and consultant. The extensive Series EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH MATERIAL series includes Luft's notes and data on his own research, subject files containing his annotated reprints of work done by others and illustrative material in several formats. This material characterizes his research methods but has few connections with specific projects. The small series of TEACHING MATERIAL documents courses in respiratory physiology for the period 1964-1980. Luft's teaching and consulting work is often referred to in the CORRESPONDENCE.
There is little documentation for his administrative responsibilities at the School of Aviation Medicine or the Lovelace Medical Foundation.
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