Arturo Rosenblueth

Arturo Rosenblueth (October 2, 1900 – September 20, 1970) was a Mexican researcher, physician and physiologist, who is known as one of the pioneers of cybernetics.

Biography
Rosenblueth was born in 1900 in Ciudad Guerrero, Chihuahua. He began his studies in Mexico City, then traveled to Berlin and Paris where he obtained his medical degree. Returning to Mexico city in 1927, he engaged in teaching and research in physiology. In 1930 he obtained a Guggenheim Scholarship and moved to Harvard University, to the department of Physiology, then directed by Walter Cannon. With Cannon he explored the chemical mediation of homeostasis. Rosenblueth cowrote research papers with both Cannon and Norbert Wiener, pioneer of cybernetics.

In 1944, Rosenblueth became professor of physiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Eventually he became head of the Physiology Laboratory of the National Institute of Cardiology, head of the Physiology Department and, in 1961, director of the Center for Scientific Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav) at the National Polytechnic Institute.

Between 1947 and 1949, and again between 1951 and 1952, using grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, he returned to Harvard to further collaborate with Wiener.

Arturo Rosenblueth died September 20, 1970 in Mexico City.

Work
Since the 1930s Rosenblueth worked with Cannon on issues related with Chemical transmission among nervous elements. Between 1931 and 1945 he worked with several specialists, among them Cannon, del Pozo, H.G. Schwartz, and Norbert Wiener. With Wiener and Julian Bigelow he wrote "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology", which, according to Wiener himself, set the bases for the new science of Cybernetics.

He devoted himself to the fields of nervous impulse transmissions, neuromuscular transmission, synaptic transmission, the propagation of impulses in the heart, the control of blood circulation, and the physiology of brain cortex. However he also taught several courses of mathematics and even musicology.

Quotes

 * "The best model of a cat is another cat..., specially the same cat."

Publications

 * 1937, Arturo Rosenblueth,Fisiología del sistema nervioso autónomo ("Physiology of the Autonomous Nervous System", with Walter Cannon
 * 1943, Behavior, Purpose and Teleology, with Norbert Wiener, Julian Bigelow
 * 1945, "The Role of Models in Science" with Norbert Wiener
 * 1967, Mind and Body: a philosophy of sciente
 * 1970, "Mente y Cerebro: una filosofia de la ciencia" hilosophy of science