Physiology or Medicine

Award ceremony speech

  Presentation Speech by Professor Bertil B. Fredholm of the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is not very strange that a car, a television set or some other complex device sometimes stops working. No, the extraordinary thing is that these…

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Ferid Murad knew that nitroglycerine caused relaxation of smooth muscle cells. The enzyme, guanylyl cyclase, was activated and increased cyclic GMP, causing relaxation of the muscle. Did nitroglycerin act via release of nitric oxide, NO? He bubbled NO-gas through tissue containing the enzyme; cyclic GMP increased! A new mode of drug action had been discovered!…

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Biographical

I was born in Tardebigg, Worcestershire, on the 29th March 1927, one of three children, with an elder sister and brother. My father, Maurice Vane, was a son of immigrants from Russia and my mother, Frances Vane, came from a Worcestershire farming family. We lived in a suburb of Birmingham where I attended the local…

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