Alan Hodgkin

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin

["Biophysicist", "Nobel Prize in Medicine 1963", "Hodgkin-Huxley Model"]

Born Feb 05, 1914

Banbury (Oxfordshire), United Kingdom

Passed Away Dec 20, 1998 Cambridge, United Kingdom

Lifespan 84 years old

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Notice / Correction

"The pleasure of discovery is that you find nature is more beautiful and subtle than you ever dared to imagine."

Archival Overview

English biophysicist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Medicine alongside Andrew Huxley for discovering the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central parts of the nerve cell membrane.

Biographical Record

Sir Alan Hodgkin (1914–1998) worked on airborne centimetric radar during World War II, helping invent the H2S radar system that guided Allied bombers. Returning to the Marine Biological Association laboratory in Plymouth, Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley inserted micro-electrodes inside the giant axon of the Atlantic squid (Loligo forbesii).

In 1952, using the voltage clamp technique, Hodgkin and Huxley published five historic papers in the Journal of Physiology demonstrating that the action potential is generated by rapid influx of sodium ions followed by efflux of potassium ions, formulating the mathematical differential equations (Hodgkin-Huxley model) that govern modern electrophysiology.

Key Life Milestones

1952

Publication of the Hodgkin-Huxley Model

Published the mathematical equations describing the voltage-gated sodium and potassium channels of nerve impulses.

1963

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine

Received the Nobel Prize alongside Andrew Huxley and John Eccles for ionic mechanisms of nerve conduction.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial

Trinity College Chapel Memorial
Cambridge, United Kingdom

                         GPS: 52.2072, 0.1169                    

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