Renin is a component of the renin–angiotensin system which regulates blood pressure, salt and water homeostasis and is an important therapeutic target.
[1] Tigerstedt matriculated from Åbo Gymnasium in Turku in 1869, and then studied physical and natural sciences at the University of Helsinki, where he was taught by the notable chemist Carl Axel Arrhenius.
In 1878 he married his Ukrainian cousin, Ljuba Ludmila Martinau (1850–1935) and their first child, Maria (Ljubow Marie Nathalie Eveline (1879–1975)), was born while Tigerstedt was still a medical student.
[1] Tigerstedt undertook most of his major scientific work, including the discovery of renin during his two decades at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
[7] Alongside his work on the heart and circulation, he also performed important studies in metabolism and nutrition, and with Klas Gustaf Anders Sondén designed the Sonden-Tigerstedt respiration chamber.
[8] Tigerstedt also began writing his classic 'Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschens (Textbook of Human Physiology)' during this period.
His friend Ivan Pavlov called it 'the greatest textbook of physiology ever written'[1] and it exerted a considerable worldwide influence.
[9] Tigerstedt was fluent in several languages, edited four scientific journals concurrently, authored numerous articles in popular magazines, wrote an extensive range of biographical works on famous scientists, and made important contributions to modernizing the teaching of medical sciences in Stockholm and later in Helsinki.
[17] In his retirement Tigerstedt continued to write; his encyclopaedic Physiology of the Circulation was published shortly before his death from a heart attack in 1923.
They further showed that the pressor effect of renin did not require an intact nervous system and that it was not accompanied by a change in heart rate.
Since Tigerstedt spoke Russian, he and J. E. Johannson, Professor of Experimental Physiology at the Karolinska, were sent to St Petersburg to visit Pavlov and his laboratory.
[28] The American Society of Hypertension confers a 'Robert Tigerstedt Distinguished Scientist Award' onto leading blood pressure researchers.