Mission | John B. Pierce | History of Pierce Laboratory | Yale Affiliation

The John B. Pierce Laboratory is an independent research institute founded in 1933 and affiliated with Yale University. Housed in its own three-story Georgian-style building located across the street from the School of Medicine, the Laboratory affords a unique environment for interaction and collaboration among scientists within the Laboratory and in the surrounding Yale community.

Mission

The Laboratory is a non-profit, multidisciplinary research institute devoted to studying the ways biological systems interact with their environment, especially the 'built' (constructed) environment, and with the consequences of these interactions for human health and well being. This objective is being pursued in two main thematic areas: (1) energy balance, with an emphasis on physiological responses to environmental stimuli that affect the intake and expenditure of energy and the regulation of blood flow, and (2) sensory neuroscience, with an emphasis on central neural processes that underlie perceptual and behavioral responses to environmental stimuli. Research in these areas, which is conducted at levels of analysis ranging from molecular biology to behavioral measurement, is supported by proceeds from the endowment of the John B. Pierce Foundation and by grants and contracts from public and private sources.

John B. Pierce

John Bartlett Pierce was born on June 2, 1844, in Embden, Maine. Not of noble means, but thrifty, hardworking, close-mouthed, and hard-headed, Pierce managed to accumulate a few thousand dollars with which he began his business career as a storekeeper in Buffalo, New York. Recognizing the ingenuity of steam/boiler heat in the chilly north, he also started a boiler factory. The Pierce Steam Heating Company manufactured and sold steam and hot water heating devices (steel boilers and cast iron radiators). In 1892, Pierce merged independent manufacturers into the American Radiator Company. The success of the American Radiator Company is well known today both through its historic home, the American Radiator Building of 1924, which overlooks Bryant Park in New York City, and even more so through its merger in 1929 with the Standard Sanitary Co. into today's American Standard, Inc.

John B. Pierce remained thrifty throughout his life, and consistently refused to use his wealth to dominate the industry that he had established. Forever the Vice President of his own company, he did not create his own family dynasty, for, although he married twice, he remained childless at his death on June 23, 1917. In his will, Pierce named more than 400 friends and employees, bequeathing them shares of American Radiator Company stock, upwards of a million dollars of his estate.

"My business career has been almost wholly identified with the manufacture and sale of heating apparatus and appliances. The beginning was exceedingly modest in consequence of the limited means at my command and my enterprise was attended by all the cares, problems and vicissitudes of a new endeavor but by application and perseverance it grew and prospered until the organization of the first American Radiator Company in 1892. Since then the value of my stock in that Company (and in the later Company of the same name which succeeded it) has been largely augmented by the splendid results achieved by that Company, materially due to my business associates who have demonstrated keen business ability, combined with a fine sense of honor, a high quality of integrity and a conscientious and loyal devotion to the performance of duty. There also developed in the business organization a splendid spirit of co-operation in its various departments and among its employees, steadily advancing the range of the Company's operations not only throughout this country but also throughout foreign countries. Gratefully paying the foregoing tribute to my co-workers I further manifest my appreciation by providing tangible benefit for many of them out of the estate which they have helped expand."
(Paragraph XII, Will and Codicil of John B. Pierce)

In his will, Pierce also established a fund to be administered and governed by three friends, each closely associated with him and his business, as Trustees of the John B. Pierce Foundation. In 1924, the John B. Pierce Foundation was formally established as it received its Charter: to promote research, educational, technical or scientific work in the general field of heating, ventilation and sanitation, for the increase of knowledge to the end that the general hygiene and comfort of human beings and their habitations may be advanced. In 1931, with the endowment largely completed ($8,000,000) and the Foundation fully activated, a Housing Research Division was established in Raritan, New Jersey, to study, develop, and test construction systems, material, parts, and equipment for revolutionizing conceptions of housing.

The Trustees of the Pierce Foundation selected Charles-E.A. Winslow, considered the father of public health, to be the first Director of the Pierce Laboratory and to this end established a research facility adjacent to the Yale School of Medicine and its Department of Public Health, which Winslow chaired. In 1933, the John B. Pierce Laboratory (originally the John B. Pierce Laboratory of Hygiene) was established in New Haven, CT, to be a center "to promote research for the increase of knowledge to the end that human health and comfort are advanced." The Pierce Laboratory offered a site to combine the engineering, medical, physical, biological, and physiological sciences in a team approach to the study of responses to the environment. This approach became one of the Laboratory's greatest assets, enabling it to become a leader in research on the indoor environment in general, and on air quality, the thermal environment, and thermal physiology in particular.

History of Pierce Laboratory

In the 1930's the work began with Drs. C-E.A. Winslow, L.P. Herrington, and A. P. Gagge, who defined the physical principles describing how organisms exchange energy with their environments. Thermal exchange was measured in terms of four basic physical processes: radiation, convection, vaporization, and conduction. These pioneering studies in what is called human calorimetry laid the foundation for later studies in pulmonary and thermal physiology and air quality and pollution.

In the 1940's and 1950's research centered entirely on military efforts for World War II and the Korean War. These efforts included the development of thermal materials for clothing and housing. Pierce scientists at the Laboratory and engineers at the Housing Research Division developed construction systems and materials to provide affordable, comfortable, safe, housing that could be quickly mass-produced during and after the war.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Pierce scientists pioneered studies of building regulations and the physiological effects of the thermal environment. Professional organizations such as the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineering (ASHRAE) interacted closely with the Laboratory in setting industry standards for human comfort and health.

The 1970s and 1980s saw profound changes in the structure and philosophy of the Laboratory's research programs. Under the directorship of James D. Hardy, a renowned scientist in the fields of pain, thermal sensation, and body temperature regulation, the Laboratory came to place greater emphasis on basic biological processes that underlie responses to environmental stimuli. Under Hardy’s direction, the laboratory expanded greatly in physical size, in scope of its research disciplines, and in scientific staff. Research came to be organized under five Working Groups, each with its Head: Biophysics (Jan Stolwijk), Bioengineering (Pharo Gagge), Air Sanitation (Arend Bouhuys), Psychophysics (Joseph Stevens), and Physiology (James Hardy). Another notable development in Hardy's directorship was the establishment in 1966 of a formal affiliation with Yale University, recognizing a long history of interaction. The affiliation calls for the mutual sharing of facilities and encouragement of joint Yale and Pierce appointments of scientists.

From the 1970s to the present, research continued to flourish within the framework of the Laboratory's mission. Under the directorships of Arthur DuBois (1974-1988), Ethan Nadel (1989-1998) and Lawrence Marks (1999-present), the formal group structure evolved into three broad but interrelated research areas: cardiovascular biology and circulation; energy metabolism; and sensory neuroscience.

Affiliation with Yale University

Although an autonomous institute, the Laboratory maintains a formal affiliation with Yale University. The Laboratory is located on the campus of the Yale School of Medicine, and its scientists hold joint appointments in various departments at the University. The formal affiliation with Yale offers Laboratory scientists full access to unsurpassed intellectual and professional resources, while providing the University with the expertise of internationally recognized scholars in research areas of the Laboratory’s mission.. More information......