Otto Loewi - Research, Biography

Pharmacologist, born in Frankfurt, WC Germany. He studied at Strasbourg and Munich, and was professor of pharmacology at Graz (1909–38). Forced to leave Nazi Germany in 1938, he became research professor at New York University College of Medicine from 1940. In 1936 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on nerve impulses and their chemical transmission.

Otto Loewi (June 3, 1873 – December 25, 1961) was a German-American pharmacologist.

Research

Before Loewi's experiments, it was unclear whether signalling across the synapse was bioelectrical or chemical. He dissected out of frogs two beating hearts: one with the vagus nerve which controls heart rate attached, the other heart on its own. By electrically stimulating the vagus nerve, Loewi made the first heart beat slower. Then, Loewi took some of the liquid bathing the first heart and applied it to the second heart. The application of the liquid made the second heart also beat slower, proving that some soluble chemical released by the vagus nerve was controlling the heart rate.

Loewi's investigations “On an augmentation of adrenaline release by cocaine” and “On the connection between digitalis and the action of calcium” were profound concepts and were studied relentlessly by others decades later.

He also clarified two mechanisms of eminent therapeutic importance: the blockade and the augmentation of nerve action by certain drugs.

He is almost as famous for the means by which the idea for his experiment came to him as he is for the experiment itself.

The next morning he arose very excited because he knew this dream had been very important.

That day, he said, was the longest day of his life, as he tried, without success,to remember his dream.

That night, he had the same dream.

Biography

Loewi was born in Frankfurt, Germany.

Beginning in 1898, he spent many years in Austria, where his first lines of research were in the area of metabolism.

In 1903, he accepted an appointment at the Karl Franz University in Graz, Austria, where he would remain until being forced out of the country in 1938.

After being arrested, along with two of his sons, on the night of the German invasion of Austria, March 11, 1938, Loewi was released on condition that he "voluntarily" relinquish all his possessions to the Nazis. Loewi moved to the United States in 1940, where he became a research professor at the New York University College of Medicine.

The caption under the photo is incorrect. His gold Nobel medal resides at the Royal Society in London, but the diploma is at the Karl Franz University in Graz, Austria, where he was on faculty from 1903 until he was forced out in 1938.