Daniel Bovet

Daniel Bovet (1907 to 1992) was a Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering drugs that block the actions of specific neurotransmitters. He is best known for his work in 1937 that identified the antihistamines, compounds that block histamine and are now widely used in allergy medication. His wider research covered chemotherapy, the sulfa drugs, the sympathetic nervous system and the pharmacology of curare. Born in Fleurier, Switzerland, he graduated from the University of Geneva in 1927, took his doctorate in 1929 and worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris until 1947. He then moved to the Istituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome, received the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh in 1949, and later held professorships at Sassari and at the University of Rome La Sapienza before retiring in 1982.