Alan Hodgkin

Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (1914–1998) was a British physiologist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research on the ionic mechanisms of nerve impulses.

Andrew Huxley: Andrew Fielding Huxley was a British physiologist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for explaining the ionic basis of nerve impulses. Huxley collaborated with Hodgkin on the experiments and mathematical account of the action potential.
Action potential: A rapid, temporary reversal of a cell’s membrane voltage that propagates along excitable cells. Hodgkin’s research explained the ionic events that generate this nerve signal.
Luigi Galvani: Luigi Galvani was an Italian physician whose experiments on frog nerves and muscles helped establish bioelectricity. Galvani’s eighteenth-century experiments began the tradition of studying electricity in nerves and muscles.
Patch clamp: An electrophysiological technique that records current through a small patch of cell membrane, often through individual ion channels. Later membrane-current methods made it possible to investigate channel behavior at finer scales than Hodgkin’s axon experiments.
Bernard Katz: Bernard Katz was a German-born British physiologist who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize for work on synaptic transmission. Katz’s research extended the ionic approach to how nerve cells communicate at synapses.
Hodgkin–Huxley model: A mathematical model describing action potentials through time-varying membrane conductances and ionic currents. Hodgkin and Huxley converted their axon measurements into this quantitative account.
Julius Bernstein: Julius Bernstein was a German physiologist who proposed that membrane permeability changes explain nerve excitation. Hodgkin’s evidence for selective ion movements replaced key parts of Bernstein’s membrane theory.
Ion channel: A membrane protein that permits selected ions to cross a cell membrane through a regulated pore. Hodgkin’s current measurements helped establish ion channels as the basis of electrical signaling.
John Zachary Young: John Zachary Young was a British zoologist whose research on squid helped establish the giant axon as an experimental model. Young’s biological expertise helped Hodgkin and Huxley use squid nerves for precise recordings.
Voltage clamp: An electrophysiological technique that holds membrane voltage fixed while measuring the current required to maintain it. Voltage clamp let Hodgkin separate ionic currents that normally overlap during an action potential.

Linked from 5 pages