Arthur Guyton

Arthur Guyton was an American physiologist born on September 8, 1919 and died on April 3 2003.

Guyton is most famous for his experiments in the 1950s which studied the physiology of cardiac output and its relationship with the peripheral circulation.

It was this work which overturned the conventional wisdom that it was the heart itself that controlled cardiac output. Guyton instead demonstrated that it was the need of the body tissues for oxygen which was the real regulator of cardiac output. The "Guyton Curves" describing the relationship between cardiac and peripheral vasculature pressures and volumes form the basis of understanding the physiology of circulation.

The son of a physician, Dr. Guyton initially intended to be a surgeon but was partially paralysed after being infected with polio. Instead he concentrated on physiology research and teaching, and became the head of the University of Mississippi Dept. of Physiology and Biophysics. He retired as department chair in 1989 but continued as emeritus professor up until his death in 2003 in a car accident.