Lucien Brouha

Lucien Brouha

Personal information
Birth name	Lucien Antoine Maurice Brouha
Born	(1899-10-26)26 October 1899 Liège, Belgium
Died	6 October 1968(1968-10-06) (aged 68) Liège, Belgium
Resting place
Sport
Sport	Rowing
Club	UNL, Liège
hide Medal record Men's rowing Representing  Belgium European Rowing Championships 1921 Amsterdam Double sculls 1922 Barcelona Double sculls 1924 Zürich Coxed four

Lucien Antoine Maurice Brouha (26 October 1899 – 6 October 1968) was a Belgian rower who later became a notable exercise physiologist in the United States. He won three medals (one silver and two bronze) at European Rowing Championships between 1921 and 1924. He attended the 1924 Paris Olympics but his team was eliminated in the repechage. In his early medical career, he helped develop an early pregnancy test at the University of Liège. From the 1930s, his academic interest shifted towards exercise physiology and from 1934, he had many exchanges with universities in the United States. Having been a prisoner of war during Word War I, he left Belgium for Paris due to increasing tension with Nazi Germany in early 1940. From there, he relocated to Harvard University, Massachusetts, later in 1940. At Harvard, he mostly carried out research for the United States Army. He is best known for developing the Harvard step test (HST), a simple fitness test first used by the army but soon used for civilian purposes, too. His academic career finished in 1944 when he moved to a large industrial employer, where he helped shape the field of occupational ergonomics.

Early life[]

Brouha was born in 1899 in Liège, Belgium.^[1] His father, Maurice Brouha (1875–1948), was a gynaecologist and obstetrician. During World War I while still at high school, Brouha Jr couriered dispatches for the Belgian Army and he was imprisoned by the Germans for this in 1917. When he returned in 1918, his mother could not recognise him as he was so thin and dirty; he had also lost most of his hearing. After the war, he was awarded the Political Prisoner's Medal 1914–1918; this was awarded by Belgium to those who had been imprisoned for at least one month by the enemy.^[2]

Rowing[]

His physical fitness recovered after having been a prisoner of war, and Brouha took up field hockey, sprint, but his main emphasis was on rowing.^[2] He was a member of UNL, the Société Royale Union Nautique de Liège, a water sports club based in Liège. He rowed with fellow club member Jules George in the double scull and competed at the 1921 European Rowing Championships in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where they won a silver medal. At the 1922 European Rowing Championships in Barcelona, Spain, they won bronze in this boat class.^[3] They were Belgian national champions in 1922 and 1923 in double scull.^[4]

For the 1924 rowing season, Brouha and George were part of a men's coxed four. Alongside Victor Denis and Marcel Roman as rowers and coxswain Georges Anthony, they went to the 1924 Paris Olympics where they were eliminated in the round one repechage.^[1][5][6] It has not been recorded whether the coxswain remained the same but the same rowers went afterwards to the 1924 European Rowing Championships in Zürich, Switzerland, where they won bronze.^[7]

Scientific career[]

Belgium[]

Brouha graduated with a Doctor of Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics from the University of Liège in 1924; this is the institution where his father was a professor. He remained at the university and joined the Institute Léon Fredericq, where he researched endocrinology. In 1931, he worked with two French researchers and developed what was known as the Brouha-Hinglais-Simonnet reaction (Hermann Hinglais and Henri Simmonet, with input by Hinglais' spouse Marguerite), an early pregnancy test using rabbits.^[2] This built on research undertaken by Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek and known as the AZ test. Brouha and his researchers found a 40-percent error rate with this test, which they modified by switching from female to male mice.^[8] Later, they used male and female rabbits.^[9] By the end of the 1930s, there were 48 different pregnancy tests, with one of the two most common tests known as the Friedman-Brouha test carried out using rabbits (named after Maurice Friedman), which was also known as the rabbit test.^[10][11]

Brouha was appointed as lecturer-in-charge at the Higher Institute of Physical Education (HIPE) in October 1932; HIPE was part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Liège. It was a university institute that facilitated doctorates in physical education and Brouha got the position in part because of his own athletic career. The Ministry of Public Instruction arranged for Brouha to undertake a study tour of other European institutes that offered research in physical education so that HIPE at Liège could flourish. Brouha was particularly impressed by the work undertaken by August Krogh in zoophysiology at the University of Copenhagen, and by 's work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for Occupational Physiology in Dortmund (which is now the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology). Brouha's major conclusion from this field trip was the need for various laboratories that could assist in the research work.^[2]

Brouha received scholarships from the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation (CRBEF); this was a subsidiary of the American Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) that had supplied food to Belgium during WWI under the leadership of Herbert Hoover. About a quarter of Belgian academic staff could travel during the interwar years to the United States with CRBEF funding, which equated to about 20 academics per year, and Brouha received more funding than anybody else from Belgium. His initial stay in the US was in 1934, when he spent three months at various university. In 1935, he had four months in the US. He spent most time at the HFL, the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory of Harvard University, where George Wells Fitz had established a programme in Anatomy, Physiology, and Physical Training; one of the earliest university programmes of this kind. Other universities where Brouha visited were Yale University, the University of Chicago, and Springfield College. Major connections were with at Springfield College and with Walter Bradford Cannon at HFL. Brouha and Cannon facilitated a close connection between HFL and Belgium, and many Belgians physiology academics went to Harvard for research. Brouha's early research at HFL expanded on experiments on dogs that he had previously carried out with Corneille Heymans from Ghent University and a number of papers were co-authored by American and Belgian academics. From 1936, Brouha increasingly specialised in exercise physiology. After a stay at HFL over the 1937/38 winter, Brouha was appointed as full professor at Liège backdated to 1 January 1938.^[2]

United States[]

The tension in Europe preceding World War II weighed heavily on Brouha's mind and in February 1940, he and his wife left Belgium to join the French National Research Council in Paris; his laboratory in Liège was destroyed through bombardment during the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940. Guy La Chambre assigned him to the French Air Force, where he worked in the Laboratory of the Medico-Physiological Services with physiologist . Brouha's role was to test pilots for physical fitness and fatigue. But he soon answered Cannon's call to come to Harvard and he arrived in Boston in August 1940.^[2]

At Harvard, Brouha worked under Lawrence Joseph Henderson and David Bruce Dill on military research at the HFL. Brouha was appointed as research associate and tutor, covering biomedical sciences. The focus on military research was necessary for that research team as their funding from the Rockefeller Foundation was about to run out and funding from the military was readily available. The United States Army requested that a simple endurance test be developed with which they could assess the fitness of soldiers. The idea was to utilise treadmills that had been in use at HFL since 1928; at the time, these were large and immobile, and of no practical use for the army beyond fitness tests. William H. Forbes, William L. Woods, Brouha and Carl Seltzer developed requirements that needed to be met by a simple fitness test:^[2]

1. duration not to exceed 10 minutes
2. hard work that one quarter to one third of the subjects must not be able to finish 5 minutes of it
3. makes use of large muscle groups
4. high skill level not required
5. must be of similar difficulty for men with different body types
6. must be in proportion to the size of the subject
7. standardised and repeatable

Brouha took on the task of developing such a test and in the first instance, he wrote a report for the Office of Scientific Research and Development comparing the existing tests against the above criteria. Brouha and his colleagues found that the Harvard Pack Test came closest to meeting the requirements. This test used a pack a third of the subject's body weight, with a 16-inch-high (41 cm) step to be stepped up and down every two seconds. The subject's pulse was taken over three 30-second intervals after the exercise stopped and the sum of heart beats plus the duration of the exercise in seconds were entered into an equation that gave a fitness index. The disadvantage of this test was the requirement for different "weight packs". Brouha adapted the test in 1942 by using a higher step (20 inches or 51 centimetres) and by omitting the pack.^[2] Initially called the "Step Test", the researchers added a prefix to differentiate it from earlier step tests and the method became known as the Harvard step test (HST), with scientific literature first published in 1943. The HST was initially used by the army and navy for grading their personnel but then also for recruitment purposes. During 1943, the test was also promoted to schools and colleges, with the idea being that fitness would not improve if exercise was either too strenuous or too easy, hence it was better to grade students prior to physical training. Also during 1943, the HST was adopted by the Association of Boy Scouts of America for boys who had reached high school age.^[2] When Hans Vangrunderbeek and wrote a scientific paper about the history of the Harvard step test in 2013, they found that many researchers still used the HST as a reference test when developing fitness tests.^[2]

Brouha left Harvard in 1944. He had received offers from several universities but he moved into the private sector. In his new role, he studied the physiological problems for an industrial firm. In his new role, he helped shape the field of occupational ergonomics.^[2] In 1968, Brouha won the Gilbreth Medal. At the time, he was employed by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.^[12] The Lucien Brouha Work Physiology Symposium, also known as the Brouha Symposium, has been held since 1961 as a conference for work physiology.^[2]

Family and death[]

Brouha's younger brother was Paul Brouha (1910–1943). A resistance fighter, he was caught by the Germans in early 1943 and executed at the Citadel of Liège on 31 May 1943.^[13][14] His brother's widow, Suzanne Brouha (née Ledent), married Jean Rey in 1950.^[15]

Brouha was married to Elizabeth Shaler. Her father was the American mining engineer Millard Shaler who was in Belgium at the beginning of WWI. Appointed by Herbert Hoover, Shaler held high positions with the Commission for Relief in Belgium.^[16][17] They had two sons and two daughters. One of his daughters was married to Marcel Dubuisson, who was rector of the University of Liège from 1953 to 1971.^[18]

Brouha died on 6 October 1968 "after a long and painful illness" in Liège, Belgium; he was survived by his wife and their four children. His funeral at the was attended by close family only.^[1][18]

References[]

External links[]

• Brouha Symposium