Otto Loewi

Otto Loewi (1873 to 1961) was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter and shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Henry Dale. Born in Frankfurt, he took his medical degree at Strasbourg in 1896, turned from clinical work to pharmacology at Marburg, and from 1903 worked at the University of Graz, where he held the chair of pharmacology from 1909. His 1921 experiment with two frog hearts showed that a soluble substance released by the vagus nerve, which he called Vagusstoff and which proved to be acetylcholine, slowed the heart, showing that nerve impulses are transmitted chemically. He is also known for Loewi's mydriatic test and work on adrenaline and digitalis. Forced out of Austria in 1938, he reached Britain and then New York University, and became a United States citizen in 1946.