At a gathering of the School of Arts and Sciences on Oct. 3, 2023, the next tribute to the life and repair of the late Charles Peirson Lyman was unfold upon the everlasting data of the School.

It was not true that the Lowells spoke solely to the Cabots and the Cabots spoke solely to God.  Each households had been on cordial phrases with the Lymans.  Charles Peirson Lyman, or Charlie, as he was identified, got here from a well-to-do Boston household.  The Lyman fortune had been made within the China commerce by Lyman’s great-great-grandfather, the primary Theodore Lyman.  Lyman’s great-grandfather Theodore Lyman, Jr., graduated within the Harvard Faculty class of 1810 and was mayor of Boston within the 1830s.  Lyman’s grandfather Theodore Lyman III, who graduated within the Harvard class of 1855 earlier than attending the Lawrence Scientific Faculty, was a Harvard overseer, a cousin of Charles Eliot (whom he was instrumental in having appointed as Harvard President), and an underwriter and organizer of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), for which he served as a trustee and treasurer.  Lyman’s uncle Theodore Lyman IV, Harvard class of 1897, was a physics professor at Harvard College, after whom the Lyman Laboratories at the moment are named.  Lyman’s father, Henry Lyman, and mom, Elizabeth Cabot Lyman, named their elder son after Charles Lawrence Peirson, Harvard Class of 1853, who had been an officer within the twentieth Massachusetts Infantry and had been captured on the battle of Ball’s Bluff within the Civil Conflict.

Lyman graduated from Harvard Faculty in 1936.  In June 1941, he married Jane Hunnewell Cheever, a former pupil of Radcliffe Faculty.  Lyman obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1942.  His thesis on colour change in snowshoe hares was supervised by Glover Morrill Allen, Curator of Mammals and Professor of Zoology on the Museum of Comparative Zoology.  As a graduate pupil, Lyman additionally undertook physiological analysis at Harvard Medical Faculty underneath the supervision of Frederick Hisaw.  Instantly after defending his thesis, Lyman served within the Pacific Theater as an aviation physiologist with america Military Air Corps.  On this position, he suggested airmen on using oxygen tools at excessive altitude.  After the struggle, he returned to Harvard and divided his time between Harvard Medical Faculty and the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

At Harvard Medical Faculty, Lyman undertook analysis within the Departments of Physiology and Anatomy.  He served as Affiliate Professor of Anatomy and was the curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum.  On the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Lyman served as Assistant Curator of Mammals.  In 1951, he turned Affiliate Curator of Mammals underneath Barbara Lawrence Schevill.  Within the Nineteen Sixties, he helped to determine the Harmony Area Station in Bedford, Massachusetts, for the research of huge animal physiology and to help discipline analysis actions in Harmony’s Estabrook Woods.  He was Appearing Director of the Area Station for six years till the appointment of his former doctoral pupil Charles Richard Taylor as the primary everlasting director.  Lyman turned Curator of Mammalogy in 1968 after which Professor of Biology in 1976–77 as MCZ curatorial positions had been transformed into professorships within the School of Arts and Sciences.  He retired from the School in 1981 however continued analysis at Harvard Medical Faculty and the Harmony Area Station.  In 1989, his brother, Henry Lyman, and buddies endowed the Charles P. Lyman chair in comparative physiology.  Charles Richard Taylor was the primary incumbent of the professorship.

Lyman’s analysis in comparative physiology lined many species and matters however with a selected give attention to torpor, hibernation, and adaptation to chilly temperatures.  As endothermic animals, many mammals and birds bear quick durations of torpor or longer durations of hibernation.  Examples are the each day nocturnal torpor of hummingbirds, used to preserve their power by cooling their our bodies at night time, or longer-term hibernators reminiscent of floor squirrels and marmots, who preserve power over the course of the winter.  Lyman led the sector of animal torpor and hibernation from the Nineteen Sixties and into the Nineteen Eighties, exhibiting that an animal’s entrance into torpor or hibernation is a extremely regulated change of physiological state.  This modification requires the mixing of upper and decrease mind facilities to provoke and subsequently coordinate the animal’s cardiovascular and respiratory programs in relation to its mobile metabolism.

Lyman confirmed that entry to torpor is pushed by vagal parasympathetic inhibition of coronary heart and respiratory charges that result in a decline in blood strain, metabolic price, and thus physique temperature.  When in torpor or hibernation, animals can decrease and regulate their physique temperature to as little as 5°C, in comparison with a standard worth of 37 to 41°C.  Lyman and his college students discovered that deeper, longer durations of hibernation contain the extra withdrawal of the animal’s sympathetic stimulation of coronary heart price.  Lyman pioneered early research of the mind circuits and neurotransmitters concerned in coordinating the adjustments in physiological state, speculating that the limbic, the reticular, or each areas of the mind drive the shift in physiological state in response to sensory data processed inside the cortex.

Simply as entrance into torpor or hibernation is a regulated physiological course of, Lyman confirmed that arousal from torpor or hibernation is a equally regulated course of involving elevated muscle exercise to heat the animal together with elevated coronary heart and respiratory charges.

An amusing household story tells of Lyman’s ardour for animal physiology.  One early spring, whereas on a visit at a lodge in northern Scotland together with his spouse, Lyman spied a sleepy hedgehog staggering out of the melting forest snow.  The following morning, the French prepare dinner ran screaming out of the resort refrigeration unit, chased by the indignant hedgehog.  Lyman had caught the animal and deposited it within the fridge to see if chilling would reinduce torpor — apparently not!

Lyman’s monographs in “Hibernation and Torpor in Mammals and Birds” appeared in 1982, the yr after his retirement.

Charles Lyman was married to Jane Hunnewell Cheever for 58 years and collectively they raised 5 youngsters, Charles, Jr., Theodore, Russell, Elizabeth, and Jane, at Pakeen Farm in Canton, Massachusetts.  The Lymans had been ardent conservationists dedicated to the preservation of agricultural land in Massachusetts.  Pakeen Farm continues to be actively managed as a Group Supported Agriculture farm by their daughter Jane (Lyman) Bihldorff and grandson David Bihldorff.

Respectfully submitted,

A.W. Crompton
David Haig
Andrew A. Biewener, Chair