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PHYSIOLOGYTimeline of
The American Physiological Society
1822 William Beaumont is the first American to employ the practical application of physiology when a patient’s gunshot wound healed with a window-like opening. This allows Beaumont to look directly into the stomach and study gastric function.
1865 Claude Bernard publishes his landmark text, “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine.” It provides the first clear explanation of the theory and practice surrounding physiological and medical experiments.
1887 Twenty-eight charter members, representing the handful of physiology labs that exist in the country at the time, form the American Physiological Society (APS) in New York City.
1898 APS publishes the first volume of the American Journal of Physiology.
1904 Alexis Carrel performs the first mammalian heart transplant. He wins the 1912 Nobel Prize for developing techniques to suture blood vessels, transfuse blood, and transplant organs.
1910 August Krogh publishes his findings showing that fluid and oxygen exchange in the capillaries and lung membranes is mediated by diffusion. He wins the Nobel Prize in 1920 for discovering how blood flow is regulated in capillaries.
1916 Anton Carlson studies the stomach and the relationship between hunger and digestion. In one of his experiments, Carlson goes on a 15 day fast, using an inflated balloon in his stomach to measure the stomach contractions.
1926 Eugene Landis publishes the first calculations of direct measurements of blood pressure within arteries, capillaries, and veins.
1930’s Walter Dandy identifies the cause of water on the brain (hydrocephalus), an often deadly condition affecting infants. A neurosurgeon by trade and a great baseball fan, Dandy goes on to invent the baseball helmet.
1953 J.H. Welsh discovers the neurotransmitter, serotonin. It is found to take part in many functions of the brain. Reduced levels of serotonin in the brain have been linked since to emotional conditions such as depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
1962 James Watson and Francis Crick win the Nobel Prize for their description of the double-helix structure of DNA.
1971 Earl Sutherland is awarded a Nobel Prize for identifying cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cyclic AMP), a chemical messenger that mobilizes blood sugar in response to epinephrine. This is the first discovery of a signaling system inside the cell.
1980’s ACE inhibitors are approved by the FDA. In the late 1960’s, physiologists noticed that snakebite victims experienced fainting spells because of a dramatic and sudden drop in blood pressure. Scientists later isolated the substance in the venom that blocked the blood pressure-controlling angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE). ACE inhibitors are now the most widely used drug for the treatment of high blood pressure and congestive heart failure.
1998 Robert Furchgott, Ferid Murad, and Louis Ignarro are awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the role of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in various body systems. Their experiments find that this volatile chemical, sometimes introduced into the system by ingesting nitroglycerin, is vital to controlling blood pressure and blood vessels dilation and contraction.
2001 Leland Hartwell, Paul Nurse, and Timothy Hunt win the Nobel Prize for discovering the mechanism that regulates the cell growth, division and death. Their research will be applied to tumor diagnostics.
2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann for activation of innate immunity and Ralph Steinman for role of dendritic cells in adaptive immunity.
2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to Sir John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
1858 Joseph Lister studies the cause of blood coagulation and inflammation following injuries and surgical wounds. He later discovers antiseptics and, through their use, lowers surgical mortality rates from 50 to 15 percent.
1870’s Harvard University initiates a medical physiology program. Henry Bowditch serves as the first physiologist and first full-time faculty member.
1891 Ivan Pavlov begins extensive research on “conditional reflexes” involving dogs’ saliva production in relation to various sounds and other visual stimuli. He is awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for his discoveries on the neural regulation of salivary, gastric, and pancreatic secretion.
1901 John Jacob Abel and Jokichi Takamine isolate and purify epinephrine (adrenaline), from the adrenal gland. It is the first hormone to be identified and synthesized.
1909 Karl Landsteiner classifies the basic human blood groups: A, B, AB, and O. He wins the Nobel Prize in 1930 for these discoveries. Ten years later, he discovered the Rh (+ or -) factor in blood, completing the current blood typing system used today.
1911 J.S. Haldane leads a group of respiratory physiologists on an expedition to Pike’s Peak to study the effects of altitude on human breathing.
1922 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin, the central hormone involved in diabetes, in dogs. Their innovative use of insulin rapidly converts sufferer prognosis from a certain death sentence to a disease that can be managed while living a normal and active life. Banting is awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize for these developments.
1927 The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory is formed to study exercise and environmental physiology. Laboratory Director, David Dill, conducts extensive research in extreme environmental conditions and often serves as a test subject in his own experiments.
1952 Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley discover the ionic mechanism by which nerve impulses are transmitted.
1954 Two scientific teams, led by Andrew Huxley and Hugh Huxley (no relation), discover the sliding filaments in skeletal muscle.
1967 Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performs the first human heart transplant. Advances in the physiological studies of the heart made this landmark surgery possible.
1974 Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann develop the “patch-clamp” technique, which detects and measures the movement of small amounts of substances through cell membranes. This technique gives insight into diseases involving ion channels including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cystic fibrosis. Their research wins the 1991 Nobel Prize.
1989 Lap Chee Tsui, Francis Collins, and Jack Riordan identify the cystic fibrosis gene. Their discovery has long-term implications for understanding this disease, which disrupts lung and pancreatic function in sufferers, and will be integral in the development of novel therapies.
2000 Human genome deciphered.
2003 Peter Agre wins part of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of water channels, the protein mechanism in cells that facilitates water exchange. Understanding these water channels allows scientists to study many organs, such as the kidneys that process high volumes of water every day, providing insight into diseases affecting the loss of water in the body including diabetes insipidus.
2011 National Medal of Science presented to Ralph Brinster for his fundamental contributions to the development and use of transgenic mice and to Shu Chien for his pioneering work in cardiovascular physiology and bioengineering.
2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka for studies of G protein-coupled receptors.
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Physiology in the FuturePhysiologists will continue to investigate biological processes and provide key insights into how the body functions in health and disease. Their work will further expand our knowledge of how genes, proteins, and other molecules shape the behavior of individual cells and tissues, and how entire organ systems are integrated into the whole organism. The American Physiological Society (APS) will continue to play an integral role in the scientific discovery process.
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