Paper short abstract:

Promised a timeless land of the ‘midnight sun’, physiologists in the twentieth century believed that the Arctic landscape was the perfect ‘laboratory’ for studying circadian rhythms. However, the dynamic nature of the seasonal photoenvironment threatened to upset the results of their studies.

Paper long abstract:

In the mid-twentieth century, physiologists studying circadian rhythms were attracted to the supposed timelessness of the Arctic for their experiments. As a 1971 article in World Medicine declared, ‘The Arctic has a silence and a timelessness that makes it as near perfect an environment … for studying the interacting, intrinsic rhythms that form the cycles of life’. Aiming to uncover the ‘fourth dimension’ of health, scientists sought to isolate experimental subjects from environmental stimuli like light, temperature, and humidity. Promised an unchanging land of the ‘midnight sun’, scientists like Mary Lobban and Nathaniel Kleitman believed that the Arctic landscape was the perfect ‘laboratory’ for rhythms science. However, the dynamic nature of the seasonal photoenvironment threatened to upset the results of their studies.

This paper will explore the clash between the myth of Arctic timelessness and scientific research into human circadian rhythms in the middle decades of the twentieth century. It brings together the history of science and environmental history to explore the use of the Arctic landscape as a laboratory for rhythms science. It will argue that cultural discourses about a ‘timeless’ Arctic environment pervaded the scientific community. It will track the development of several key rhythms experiments and the ways in which the scientists struggled with the variability of the Arctic photoenvironment. As Nathaniel Kleitman bemoaned following his own stay in Tromsø, the conditions ‘fell short of expectations.’ Ultimately, these frustrations did little to dissuade physiologists that Arctic spaces represented an ideal ‘laboratory’ for the study of rhythms.