We celebrate the life and work of Professor Emeritus John W. Severinghaus, MD, a pioneer of anesthesia, medicine, and physiology, who passed away at the age of 99 on June 2, 2021. Dr. Severinghaus' influence and inspiration has spread throughout anesthesiology, biomedical sciences, and across the globe. The ASA plenary lecture on Translational Science is named in his honor.
Dr. Severinghaus and Freeman Bradley are known for their improvements to the carbon dioxide electrode described by Stow in the analysis of blood gases (Am J Physiol 1954; 179:678; Arch Phys Med Rehabil 1957;38:646-50). Dr. Severinghaus described it as “more stable, twice as sensitive, faster in response and drifts much less,” which allowed functional measurement of blood gases and chemical properties of other physiologic fluids (J Appl Physiol 1958;13:515-20). In their 1958 seminal paper, Severinghaus and Bradley paired their carbon dioxide electrode with the Clark oxygen electrode....
