August Krogh’s Nobel winning discovery of oxygen supply to muscles
This article profiles Danish physiologist August Krogh, who won the 1920 Nobel Prize for his research on capillary motor mechanisms. His work explained how muscles receive oxygen during exercise and remains foundational to modern cardiovascular and exercise medicine.
Why it matters
Krogh's discoveries are essential to our understanding of human physiology, particularly regarding how the body manages oxygen supply during physical stress and disease.
In 1920, Danish physiologist August Krogh was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discovery of the capillary motor regulating mechanism.”
His work addressed a fundamental question: how does muscle receive enough oxygen when its demand rises sharply during exercise? Krogh showed how changes in the capillary circulation could help meet this increased demand by bringing blood closer to muscle fibres and increasing the surface available for oxygen exchange.
The work had important implications for medicine because understanding how oxygen reaches tissues is central to conditions in which blood supply is impaired, including cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes and wounds that fail to heal. The principles of microcirculation and tissue oxygenation that Krogh helped establish are now relevant to understanding tissue injury, wound healing, exercise physiology and the effects of impaired blood flow.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in