Pharmacology
The People (11)
Paul Ehrlich
Physician and dye chemist (1854–1915) who shared the 1908 Nobel for work on immunity and created Salvarsan for syphilis, the first magic-bullet drug.
Read the deep dive →Loewi Dale
German-born pharmacologist Otto Loewi and English scientist Henry Dale proved that nerves pass their signals with a chemical, acetylcholine, settling the sparks-versus-soup debate (Nobel 1936).
Read the deep dive →Gerhard Domagk
German pathologist (1895–1964) who found Prontosil, the first sulfa drug to cure spreading bacterial infection; Hitler's 1937 decree forced him to refuse his 1939 Nobel.
Read the deep dive →Daniel Bovet
Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist Daniel Bovet (1907–1992), who pioneered the antihistamines and the synthetic curare-like muscle relaxants used in surgery (unshared Nobel 1957).
Read the deep dive →Katz Euler Axelrod
Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler and Julius Axelrod explained how nerve endings release, store and recapture their chemical messengers, the reuptake antidepressants target (Nobel 1970).
Read the deep dive →Black Elion Hitchings
James Black, Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings designed drugs from biochemical reasoning, giving beta-blockers, H2 blockers and drugs for gout, leukaemia and herpes (Nobel 1988).
Read the deep dive →Earl Sutherland
American physician-scientist (1915–1974) who discovered cyclic AMP, the second messenger that carries a hormone's signal inside the cell, winning the 1971 Nobel.
Read the deep dive →Tu Youyou
Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who isolated artemisinin from sweet wormwood after reading an ancient medical text closely, receiving the 2015 Nobel Prize for this antimalarial.
Read the deep dive →Gilman Rodbell
Martin Rodbell inferred and Alfred Gilman purified the G proteins that relay hormone signals inside cells, the switch behind roughly a third of drugs (Nobel 1994).
Read the deep dive →John Vane
English pharmacologist John Vane (1927–2004), who showed in 1971 that aspirin works by blocking prostaglandin production, sharing the 1982 Nobel Prize for prostaglandin research.
Read the deep dive →Furchgott Ignarro Murad
Three American pharmacologists, Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad, showed that the gas nitric oxide signals blood vessels to relax (Nobel 1998).
Read the deep dive →Everyone in this group is a Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, grouped by what the prize was awarded for. Awarded for how a drug works, or for a method of designing one, rather than for a disease or an organ. A small group, and it exists because its members fit nowhere else without being mis-shelved.
Connections
- All Notable Doctors
- Infection and Microbiology
- Genetics and Molecular Biology
- Immunology and Immunotherapy
- Metabolism and Nutrition
- Cell Biology and Physiology
- Neuroscience and the Senses
- Medical Technology and Surgery
- Nutrition and Orthomolecular
- Contemporary Practitioners
- Public Health and Institutional Medicine