Julius Axelrod
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Julius Axelrod
Born: 30 May 1912, New York, NY, USA
Died: 29 December 2004, Rockville, MD, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning the humoral transmittors in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation."
Prize share: 1/3
Work
The nervous systems of people and animals consist of many nerve cells with long extensions, or nerve fibers. Signals are conveyed between cells by small electrical currents and by special substances known as signal substances. The transfers occur via contacts, or synapses. Julius Axelrod studied noradrenaline, a signal substance that provides signals to increase activity in the case of aggression or danger. Among other things, in 1957 he showed how an excess of noradrenaline is released in response to nerve impulses and then returns to the place were it is stored after the signal is implemented.
Recommended reading
All Nobel Prizes and laureates
See the list of all Nobel Prizes, awarded for "the greatest benefit to mankind."
Alfred Nobel founded the Nobel Prizes
In his will, Alfred Nobel left 31 million SEK to found the Nobel Prizes.
"I got super excited by that unexpected result"
Medicine Laureate Shinya Yamanaka talks about the importance of taking risks.
