December 25: The Father of Neuroscience

Otto Loewi, a German pharmacologist who discovered the role played by chemicals in the synaptic transmission of nerve impulses in the body, died at 88 on this date in 1961. Loewi shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this discovery, but two years later fell victim to Nazi persecution and had to “voluntarily” surrender his possessions, including his Nobel medal and award, to be permitted to leave Austria, where he held a chair at the University of Graz (he was the last Jew hired there between 1903 and the end of World War II). Loewi spent the rest of his life in the U.S., teaching at New York University. Loewi had envisioned his experiment on nerve transmission in a dream, from which he awoke to scribble notes. The next morning he was unable to read the notes, but the next night he dreamed the same dream, and upon awakening went to his lab to perform it (involving the bathing of frogs’ hearts in chemical solutions). Loewi also helped identify the critical role of amino acids in the generation of proteins.

“Practicing neurologists should remember Otto Loewi when they attend to the chemistry of their patients’ synapses. The story of his Nobel dream is worth telling to our patients. His persecution by the Nazis tells us that the laboratory is not a shelter from the political world around us. His reduction of a complex question to a simple experiment tells that scientific insight favors the creative impulses of a prepared mind.” —Dr. George K. York III