2021-06-03 Thu

Otto Loewi was a German-born American physician and pharmacologist who, with Sir Henry Dale, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1936 for their discoveries relating to the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.

Loewi was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 3, 1873, in a Jewish family. He went to study medicine at the University of Strasbourg, Germany (Now part of France). He received his medical doctoral degree in 1896. He also was a member of the fraternity Burschenschaft Germania Strassburg.

His neurological researches (1921–26) provided the first proof that chemicals were involved in the transmission of impulses from one nerve cell to another and from neuron to the responsive organ. In addition to researches on the nervous system, Loewi studied diabetes and the action of the drugs digitalis and epinephrine. He devised Loewi’s test for the detection of pancreatic disease.

To celebrate the birth centenary of Otto Loewi, Austria Postal Department has issued a stamp of value 4 chilling.

Image Source: Colnect.com