Otto Loewi
| Otto Loewi | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 3, 1873 Frankfurt, German Empire |
| Died | December 25, 1961 (aged 88) New York City, United States |
| Nationality | Austria, Germany, United States |
| Fields | Pharmacology, Psychobiology |
| Alma mater | University of Strasbourg |
| Known for | Acetylcholine |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | Guida Goldschmiedt (m. 1908; 4 children) (1889-1958) |
Otto Loewi (3 June 1873 – 25 December 1961) was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist whose discovery of acetylcholine helped enhance medical therapy. The discovery earned for him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936 which he shared with Sir Henry Dale, whom he met in 1902 when spending some months in Ernest Starling's laboratory at University College, London.
Loewi was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 3, 1873 in a Jewish family. He went to study medicine at the University of Strasbourg (then part of Germany) in 1891, where he attended courses by famous professors Gustav Schwalbe, Oswald Schmiedeberg, and Bernhard Naunyn among others. He received his medical doctoral degree in 1896. He also was a member of the fraternity Burschenschaft Germania Strassburg.
Subsequently, he worked with Martin Freund at Goethe University of Frankfurt and with Franz Hofmeister in Strasbourg. From 1897 to 1898, he served as an assistant to Carl von Noorden, clinician at the City Hospital in Frankfurt. Soon, however, after seeing the high mortality in countless cases of far-advanced tuberculosis and pneumonia, left without any treatment because of lack of therapy, he decided to drop his intention to become a clinician and instead to carry out research in basic medical science, in particular pharmacology. In 1898, he became an assistant of Professor Hans Horst Meyer, the renowned pharmacologist at the University of Marburg. During his first years in Marburg, Loewi's studies were in the field of metabolism. As a result of his work on the action of phlorhizin, a glucoside provoking glycosuria, and another one on nuclein metabolism in man, he was appointed «Privatdozent» (Lecturer) in 1900. Two years later he published his paper «Über Eiweisssynthese im Tierkörper» (On protein synthesis in the animal body), proving that animals are able to rebuild their proteins from their degradation products, the amino acids – an essential discovery with regard to nutrition.
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