The concept of VO2 Max – the maximum amount of oxygen the body can use during intense effort – traces back to the work of British physiologist Archibald Vivian Hill in the 1920s.
Hill studied how muscles use oxygen and produce energy during exertion, research for which he shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Meyerhof.
The idea of an oxygen “ceiling” that the body can’t exceed, no matter how intense the effort, later became the foundation of the VO2 Max measured today in sports labs and, in simplified form, in online calculators.
A number used today by any amateur runner has, at its root, a Nobel Prize from 1922.
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