Andrew Huxley
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Andrew Fielding Huxley
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1963
Born: 22 November 1917, Hampstead, United Kingdom
Died: 30 May 2012, Grantchester, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: University College, London, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
The nervous system in people and animals consists of many different cells. In cells, signals are conveyed by small electrical currents and by chemical substances. By measuring changes in electrical charges in a very large nerve fiber from a species of octopus, Andrew Huxley and Alan Hodgkin were able to show how nerve impulses are exchanged between cells. In 1952 they could demonstrate that a fundamental mechanism involves the passage of sodium and potassium ions in opposite directions in and out through the cell wall, which gives rise to electrical charges.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
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