Lecture by Michael J. Joyner, MD.
Michael J. Joyner, MD, is the Caywood Professor of Anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was named Distinguished Investigator in 2010. His research focuses on exercise physiology, human performance, blood pressure regulation, metabolism, and transfusion practices. He is also interested in the limits of scientific reductionism and the of biomedical communications. In 1991 he first suggested that it might be possible for a human to run a marathon in less than 2 hours, and in this he will review the ideas behind this prediction, what has changed since 1991, and what the “2-hour marathon” can teach us about the limits of human performance. Dr. Joyner attended the University of Arizona, where he received a BS degree in 1981 and an MD degree in 1987. After leaving Arizona, he completed his residency training in anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic in 1993 and then developed an independent research laboratory that has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since that time. In addition to his academic achievements, Dr. Joyner has run a marathon in a time of 2:25:44.