Marthe Vogt

Marthe Louise Vogt was born on September 8, 1903 in Berlin, Germany. Her parents, Cecile and Oskar, Vogt were leading neuroanatomists and an interest in neural research started early with Vogt. She earned a medical doctorate and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Berlin. Vogt worked as an assistant to Otto Trendelenburg at the Berlin University pharmacology department starting in 1930. A year later she was appointed as head of the chemistry department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. In 1933, with the election on Hitler, Vogt decided to emigrate to the United Kingdom. Although she was not Jewish, with the rise of Hitler she felt she must leave Germany. In 1935 she got a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research in the laboratory of Sir Henry Dale.

While working there she published with Dale and Wilhelm Feldberg a seminal paper in neuroscience describing how acetylcholine serves as neurotransmitter in the voluntary nervous system. Nerve impulses are sent electrically down nerves by changing the permeability of the cell membrane to sodium ions allowing them to rush in. Once the impulse reaches the end it releases acetylcholine into nervous/muscle junction. The actylcholine serves as a chemical messenger quickly diffusing across the interface and causing the muscle to contract. The next year she moved to Girton College, Cambridge, where she remained for four years. When World War II broke out she was scheduled to imprisoned as an enemy national but her colleagues came to her rescue, Dale phoning the Home Office demanding an interview with the Home Secretary. During the war she worked with John Gaddum at the College of the Pharmacological Society in London and in 1948 published another paper with Feldberg demonstrating the presence of acetylcholine using nerves in the brain. Vogt followed Gaddum to the University of Edinburgh, where she was first hired as a lecturer and then as a reader.

In 1952 she was elected to the Royal Society of London, a honor that had only been given to 8 women before her. Vogt's research now centered on amines and their use as a neurotransmitter. Later in her career her work centered on serotonin and its effects in the brain. This research lead to breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals that aids patients with depression.

Honors won by Vogt include a Roylal Medal from the Royal Society in 1981, honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and Cambridge University and honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She retired due to ill health at the age of 87 and moved to La Jolla, California to live with her sister.

She died on the day after 100th birthday, September 9, 2003.


References:

Anon.; "Marthe Vogt"; The Telegraph; October 3, 2003

Bell, Chris; "Marthe Louise Vogt (1903-2003)"; pA2 Online; Vol.2 Issue 1; retrieved from: pa2online.org

Marthe Vogt Wikipedia Entry

Otto Loewi

Otto Loewi was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 3, 1873. His father Jacob was a Jewish wine merchant. He attended gymnasium school in Frankfrurt and then the Universities of Munich and Strasbourg as a medical student. Not really interested in clinical medicine, Loewi applied himself to physiology and pharmacology. He completed his thesis on the effects of arsenic, phosphorus, and other substances on an isolated frog heart. After completing his medical education in 1896, Loewi spent a year as an assistant doctor in a hospital in Frankfurt. There he was frustrated by the lack of effective treatment for tuberculosis and pneumonia patients. This convinced him that he did not want to practice clinical medicine and opted instead for a research career. He was able to get a position as an assistant to Hans Meyer starting work in Meyer's laboratory in Marburg in 1898. Working in Meyer's lab he researched metabolism. While working there he proved that animals were able to synthesize proteins from protein degradation products (amino acids). Before that it was believed that animals could only make proteins from other intact proteins.

In 1903 he was appointed professor of pharmacology at the University of Graz in Austria. While working at Graz he conducted an experiment that proved that the transmission of nerve impulses to the heart was conducted by a soluble factor, the idea for which came to him in a dream. First he isolated two frog hearts, one with the vagus nerve still attached. The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system and causes the heart muscle to slow its beating. First he stimulated the attached vagus nerve, which caused the attached heart to slow its beating. Taking a sample of the fluid surrounding the heart with the attached nerve he applied it to the second heart. The second heart slowed its beating in response to the added fluid. Loewi named the unknown soluble factor that caused the second heart to slow its beating "vagustoff". It was later identified as acetylcholine. The transmission of nerve impulses between different neurons and at the nerve interfaces with muscles are conducted by soluble chemicals called neurotransmitters. For his pioneering work establishing the importance of neurotransmitters Loewi shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology with Henry Dale. He would remain in Austria until 1938 when he was forced to leave due to the German occupation. After a brief stays in Belgium and the United Kingdom, Loewi emigrated to the United States in 1940

Other honors won by Loewi include honorary doctorates from the University of Graz, Yale University, University of New York (where he worked after he emigrated to the United States) and the University of Frankfurt. He was made an honorary member of the Physiological Society of London and a member of the Royal Society.

Loewi died on December 25, 1961.


References:

Valenstein, Elliot S.; The War of Soups and the Sparks: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute Over How Nerves Communicate; Columbia University Press; 2005

Otto Loewi Nobel Biography

Ottto Loewi Wikipedia Entry

Walter Hess

Walter Rudolf Hess was born on March 17, 1881 in Frauenfeld in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. He was the second of three children on Clemens and Gertrude Hess. His father was a physics teacher in a grammar school and ran a weather station. Hess learned physics from his father and helped the family electrify the family's apartment. He began studying medicine in Lausanne in 1899, finishing his studies in Berlin, Kiel, and Zurich. After passing his qualifying medical exam in Zurich, in 1906, he served as a surgeon's assistant. While a surgeon's assistant he developed a device to measure blood viscosity that was widely used clinically but has been replaced by the measurement of blood sedimentation rate. He was later an ophthalmologists's assistant and then an ophthalmologist. Hess's interest was in physiology and in 1912 he gave up a prosperous practice to take the position of a physiologist's assistant, working under Justus Gaule. In 1916, with Gaule's retirement, Hess first became interim director and then director and professor of the Department of Physiological Institute at the University of Zurich. He remained there until his retirement in 1951.

Hess's physiological studies included the circulatory system, but he is most remembered for his research into brain function. Using a fine tipped electrode he was able to stimulate regions of the mid-brain and develop a map of its functions. Mammalian brains are largely divided three regions: the hindbrain, the midbrain, and the forebrain, moving up from the spinal cord to the head (for a diagram of the brain showing some of the functions of different regions see here). Different regions of the brain have different functions with the hind brain, or brain stem, having body maintenance functions including body temperature, heart and breathing control. The forebrain includes the four lobes of the cerebellum which control thought, memory, and movement. Hess, using his electrode to stimulate regions of the hypothalamus, a region of the mid brain, found that he could stimulate excitement or apathy. He also found regions where he could stimulate hunger and thirst. For his researches he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology "for his discovery of the functional organization of the interbrain as a coordinator of the activities of the internal organs."

Other honors won by Hess include the Marcel Benoist Prize in 1932 and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bern, Geneva, and Freiburg and from McGill University.

He died on August 12, 1973.


References:

Hess, C.W.; "Walter Hess (17.3.1881-12.6.1973)"; Schwiezer Archiv fur Neurologie und Psychiatrie (2008)159:259-261

Walter Hess Nobel Biography

Walter Hess Wikipedia Entry

Joseph Erlanger

Joseph Erlanger was born on January 5, 1875 in San Francisco, California. His parents, Herman and Sarah Erlanger, were Jewish immigrants to America and he was the sixth of seven children. After only two years of high school he enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley. He was the only one of his siblings to get a college education. He earned his bachelors degree in chemistry from UCB. He then went to the newly organized John Hopkins University medical school, where he received his medical degree in 1899. He remained at Johns Hopkins Hospital until 1906 when he went to the University of Wisconsin. After serving as a professor of physiology at the University of Wisconsin, he took a position as professor of physiology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He remained there until his retirement in 1946.

Erlanger's field was physiology. His studies included the physiology of the circulatory and nervous systems. His early research was on the human circulatory system. In 1904 he designed a sphygmomanometer, a device for measuring blood pressure. With it he studied relation between blood pressure and orthostatic albuminuria, a condition where protein appears in the urine of standing patients. During the First World War he studied wound shock and he helped develop therapies for it that were used on United States troops in Europe.

Working with his former student Herbert Gasser, Erlanger developed oscilloscope that could record nerve impulses. Up to that point it had been impossible to study nerve impulses directly, as they were too weak to be detected with the available technology. In 1920 H. Sydney Newcomer invented an amplifier that allowed nerve impulses to be detected. Using this amplifier, Erlanger and Gasser developed their oscilloscope. Nerve impulses are electrical currents generated by the movement of sodium ions into the nerve cell. When a nerve cell is stimulated protein channels in the nerve cell's cellular membrane open and sodium ions flood in. The movement of sodium ions into the cell causes a change in the membrane potential and the flood of sodium ions crossing the membrane into the cell moves down the length of the cell, conducted like an electrical current. Using the oscilloscope they developed Erlanger and Gasser found that larger nerve cells conduct impulses faster than smaller nerve cells and that different nerve fibers have different functions. For their pioneering work studying nerve fibers Erlanger and Gasser were awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

Erlanger died of heart failure on December 5, 1955.


References:

Davis, Hallowell; "Joseph Earlanger: 1875-1955"; National Academy Press; 1970

Joseph Erlanger Nobel Biography

Joseph Erlanger Wikipedia Entry

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin was born on February 5, 1914 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. His family were Quakers and his pacifist father, George, died of dysentery in Baghdad while on a relief expedition to help Armenia refugees in 1918, when Hodgkin was 4. Hodgkin was raised by his mother. As a young boy he took an interest in natural history, wandering in the Oxford countryside. He attended the Downs School and Gresham's School, winning a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied zoology, chemistry and mathematics. He graduated from Trinity in 1936. After graduation he did fellowships at Trinity and the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

Returning to Cambridge in 1939, he began working with his students Andrew Huxley and Richard Keynes studying nerve cell activation, but with the outbreak of World War II the research was temporarily abandoned. Hodgkin briefly worked in aviation medicine in Farbourough, England, but then transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment where he worked on radars for fighter planes. After the war he returned to Cambridge where he lectured in physiology and was appointed assistant director of research. He  continued researching nerve cells and Huxley and Keynes returned to work with him. They also worked part time at the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Institute in Plymouth where they used giant squid nerves for their research..

The research that they were doing involved the changes in nerve cell membrane ion permeability before, during, and after nerve excitation. Using nerve cells from giant squid they established that during nerve excitement, ion channels in the membrane open allowing sodium ions to flow through the cell membrane into the cell and potassium to flow out.  This flow of ions moves down the length of the nerve cell, conducting an electrical signal. This is the way excitable cells like muscle and heart cells, as well as nerve cells, activate. Later research showed that there were protein ion channels in the cell membrane that allow ions to flow across the membrane. For their work in describing nerve cell action potentials Hodgkin and Huxley, as well as Sir John Eccles, shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine.

Other honors won by Hodgkin include, election to the Royal Society in 1948, the Foulerton Research Professorship in 1951, and the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 1965. He served as the president of the Royal Society from 1970 to 1975, as chancellor of Leicester University from 1971 to 1984 and master of Trinity College from 1978 to 1984. He was knighted in 1972 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1973.

Hodgkin died on December 20, 1998.


References:

Hodgkin, Sir Alan L.; "Sir Alan L. Hodgkin"; in The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 1; The Society for Neuroscience; 1996

Anonymous; "Nobel Prize Winning Biologist Dies, Aged 84"; BBC News; December 20, 1998

Alan L. Hodgkin Nobel Biography

Alan Lloyd Hodgkin Wikipedia Entry

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was born in Islington, London, England on November 27, 1857.  Sherrington was the illegitimate son of Anne Brooks Sherrington and Caleb Rose, an imminent Ipswich surgeon.  Caleb Rose and Anne Sherrington were married only in 1880 after the  death of his wife.  Rose was a patron of the arts and the house that Sherrington grew up in had many books and paintings.  In 1871 Sherrington entered Ipswich school, where he played soccer and was an outstanding athelete.  He began his medical training at the urging of his step-father at St. Thomas Hospital in 1876 and passed the preliminary medical examination of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1878.  A year later he passed the examination for a fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons.  In 1879 he went to Cambridge as a non-collegiate student and began studying physiology under Sir Michael Foster.  The following year he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Sherrington was a good student and earned the highest marks in his class in botany, human anatomy and physiology.  He earned membership in the Royal College of Surgeons in 1884 and earned a first class in the Natural Science Tripos and earned a M.B. Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1885.  In 1886 he earned the title of Licentiate of the Royal Collage of Physicians.  During the winter of 1884-5 he worked for German physiologist Friedrich Goltz in Strasbourg, Germany.  In 1885 he served as part of a committee that went to Toledo, Spain to investigate a potential vaccine for cholera.  The vaccine turned out to be ineffective.  Later that year he went to Berlin to work for Rudolf Virchow, studying the cholera specimens gathered in Spain.  Virchow sent Sherrington to Robert Koch for a class on technique.  Sherrington stayed with Koch for a year and studied bacteriology.  In 1886 Sherrington went to Italy to investigate a cholera epidemic.

In 1887 Sherrington was elected as a fellow at Caius College and appointed lecturer in systematic physiology at St. Thomas Hospital Medical School.  In 1891 Sherrington was appointed superintendent of the Brown Institute for Physiological and Pathological Research at the University of London.  Sherrington's research topics included leukocytes, the specific gravity of blood, the presence of bacteria in secretions and changes in blood in local inflammation. He was also able to cure his nephew from diphtheria by injecting him with anti-toxin.  This is the first recorded case of the successful use of anti-toxin in diphtheria treatment in England.  He also researched spinal reflexes, which laid the basis of the work for which he is most remembered.  In 1895 he was appointed as the Holt Professor in physiology at Liverpool University.  He continued his research into spinal cord innervation and the innervation of opposing muscles.

In 1906 Sherrington published The Integrative Action of The Nervous System, a book so important in neurophysiology that its influence has been compared to Newton's Principia's importance to physics.  In the book he introduced the term synapse to describe the space between nerve cells.  Nerve cells function to carry action potentials, a wave of electrochemical energy, that move down nerve cells.  Synapses, the spaces in between nerve cells, carry the impulse from one cell to the next by means of a chemical neurotransmitter.  When the action potential reaches the end of one nerve cell (called dendrites) that cell releases a neurotransmitter that signals the next cell to fire an action potential.  The neurotransmitter diffuses across the synapse and is detected by receptors on the second nerve cell.  In response to the neurotransmitter being detected by the receptor the second nerve cell fires, sending an action potential down the nerve.  For his work in elucidating the structure and function of the nervous system Sherrington shared part of the 1932 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine.

In 1913 he was offered the Waynflete chair in physiology, where he remained until his retirement 1936.  During World War I, when his classes were reduced he worked at a shell factory and studied fatigue, particularly industrial fatigue.  Other honors won by Sherrington include election to the Royal Society in 1893 and he served as its president in the early 1920s.  He won the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1905, the Knight of the Grand Cross in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1922 and Order of Merit in 1924.

He spent his retirement in a house he built in his boyhood home, Ipswitch, keeping an active correspondence with many of his former students. He died on March 4, 1952


References:

O'Connor, W.J.; British Physiologists 1885-1914: A Biographical Dictionary; Manchester University Press ND; 1991

Pearce, J.M.S.; "Sir Charles Scott Sherrington and the Synapse"; Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry(2004)75:544

Charles Scott Sherrington Wikipedia Entry

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington Nobel Biography