Karl Otto Lange - Wenner-Gren Laboratory at University of Kentucky

Wenner-Gren Laboratory At University of Kentucky

Dr. Lange was appointed Director of the Wenner Gren Laboratory at the University of Kentucky in 1953. The laboratory was a unit of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Dr. Lange obtained authority to restore the name of Wenner-Gren to the laboratory while developing new areas of research and development.

Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren (June 5, 1881 - November 24, 1961) was a Swedish entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in the world during the 1930s. The basis of Wenner-Gren's fortune was his early appreciation that the industrial vacuum cleaner could be adapted for domestic use. Soon after the First World War he persuaded the Swedish lighting company Electrolux, for which he then worked (securing the contract to floodlight the opening ceremony of the Panama Canal, among other successes), to buy the patent to a cleaner and to pay him for sales in company stock. By the early 1930s, Wenner-Gren was the owner of Electrolux, and the firm was a leading brand in both vacuum cleaner and refrigerator technology. Wenner-Gren also diversified his interests into the ownership of newspapers, banks and arms manufacturers, and acquired many of the holdings of the disgraced safety-match tycoon Ivar Kreuger.

The Wenner-Gren Aeronautical Research Laboratory at the University of Kentucky was built in 1941 with a gift of the Viking Foundation. It was named for Axel Wenner-Gren, a Swedish industrialist who created the Foundation.

Dr. Lange and colleagues were involved the development of the Massie Sliding Hip Nail and the Lange Skinfold Caliper in the period 1954 to 1957. A program to investigate whole body response to vibrations was initiated in 1957 and the first graduate degree based on biomedical engineering research was awarded in 1959. A USAF contract awarded in 1959 to train chimpanzees for the Mercury Space Flight program marked the major shift of activity in the laboratory to predominantly biomedical engineering research. This period also saw the establishment of the U.K. College of Medicine and the research in the area of human response to vibrations was developed through collaborative efforts with the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. The research related to space flight continued under funding from the NASA and studies of gravity effects on biological systems are still a significant part of the Center's research program. A U.K. biomedical engineering student was awarded first place honors in regional and national competition for the best technical paper presented by a graduate student to the Institute of Aerospace Sciences (now AIAA) in 1962.

The NASA research program prompted the 1966 expansion of the laboratory to house the 50 feet (15 m) diameter centrifuge for the investigation of gravity effects on earth organisms. From 1967 to 1982, research programs in cardiovascular and musculoskeletal dynamics were developed and the NASA research expanded to include a series of rocket flights (Aerobee 250A rockets) dedicated to experiments conducted by University of Kentucky investigators from the Wenner-Gren Laboratory.