Torkel Weis-Fogh

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Torkel Weis-Fogh (1922-1975) was a Danish zoologist.

He was born in Aarhus and educated at Copenhagen University. He was research assistant to the Danish Nobel Prize winning physiologist August Krogh, where he began his study of the desert locust. After Krogh's death in 1949 Weis-Fogh worked in the laboratory until it closed in 1953. He spent a year at the Copenhagen Institute of Neurophysiology, but then moved to Cambridge University in England for four years. He returned to Copenhagen as Professor of Zoophysiology, before returning to Cambridge in 1966 when he was made Professor of Zoology, Cambridge University.

Torkel Weis-Fogh pioneered studies of insect flight with August Krogh in this classic paper of 1951. The respiratory exchange of the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) before, during and after flight. J. Exp. Biol. 28,344 -357