Park Hyung Wook
Durham Univ.
Hist Stud Nat Sci. 2010 Winter;40(1):79-124. doi: 10.1525/hsns.2010.40.1.79.
Since the 1930s scientists from fields such as biochemistry, pathology, immunology, genetics, neuroscience, and nutrition have studied the relation of dietary caloric intake to longevity and aging. This paper discusses how Clive Maine McCay, a professor of animal husbandry at Cornell University, began his investigation of the topic and promoted it as a productive research program in the multidisciplinary science of gerontology. Initially, McCay observed the effect of reduced-calorie diets on life span and senescence while pursuing his nutrition research in the context of animal husbandry and agriculture. But when he received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and started to participate in the establishment of gerontology during the 1930s, the scope of his research was considerably expanded beyond his original disciplinary domain. It became a multidisciplinary research program that attracted scholars from a variety of scientific and medical disciplines. This paper argues that through this expansion McCay's research created a means of maintaining cooperation among the diverse and heterogeneous academic fields constituting gerontology.
自20世纪30年代以来，生物化学、病理学、免疫学、遗传学、神经科学和营养学等领域的科学家们一直在研究饮食热量摄入与寿命及衰老之间的关系。本文探讨了康奈尔大学畜牧学教授克莱夫·缅因·麦凯是如何开始对这一课题进行研究，并将其作为老年学多学科科学中的一个富有成效的研究项目加以推广的。最初，麦凯在畜牧学和农业背景下进行营养研究时，观察了低热量饮食对寿命和衰老的影响。但在20世纪30年代，当他获得洛克菲勒基金会的资助并开始参与老年学的创立时，他的研究范围大大扩展，超出了他原来的学科领域。它成为了一个多学科研究项目，吸引了来自各种科学和医学学科的学者。本文认为，通过这种扩展，麦凯的研究创造了一种在构成老年学的不同和异质学术领域之间保持合作的方式。
