Daniel Bovet

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Daniel Bovet

Daniel Bovet (born March 23, 1907 in Neuchâtel in western Switzerland ; † April 8, 1992 in Rome ) was a Swiss - Italian pharmacologist . In 1957 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine .

Life

Daniel Bovet grew up bilingually as the son of the psychologist, educator and Esperantist Pierre Bovet (1878–1965). After studying biology and physiology at the University of Geneva and his doctoral thesis (1929) in zoology and comparative anatomy , he first became an assistant in the laboratory for therapeutic chemistry at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under Ernest Fourneau and in 1939 himself laboratory manager. Shortly after his marriage to Filomena Nitti, the daughter of the Italian statesman Francesco Saverio Nitti in 1938, Bovet also took on Italian citizenship . His wife worked with him as a scientist (F. Bovet-Nitti or F. Bovet). In 1947 he moved to Rome at the invitation of Domenico Marotta, where he became director of the chemotherapeutic laboratory in the health department (Istituto superiore di Sanità), which was headed by Marotta. He held this office until 1964. He then took on a professorship in pharmacology at the University of Sassari from 1964 to 1971 , head of the Laboratory for Psychobiology and Psychopharmacology in Rome from 1969 to 1975 and a professorship in psychobiology at La Sapienza University in Rome from 1971 to 1982 .

Bovet received the Plantamour Prize of the University of Geneva in 1934, the Martin Damourette Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 1936, the General Muteau Prize of the Italian Academy of Sciences in 1941, the Cameron Prize of the University of Edinburgh in 1949 and the Bürgi Prize from the University of Bern, in 1949 with his wife the E. Paterno Prize and in 1952 the Addingham Gold Medal from the University of Leeds. In 1959 he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic , before he was accepted as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960 .

plant

Bovet received the Nobel Prize "for his discoveries in connection with synthetic compounds that inhibit the activity of certain substances in the body, and especially for investigations into their effects on the vascular system and skeletal muscles" (in the original of the Nobel Foundation: "for his discoveries relating to synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances, and especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles "). As early as 1935 at the Pasteur Institute, Bovet had made a decisive contribution to the development of sulfonamides . Together with his brother-in-law Frederigo (Frederic) Nitti and the scientist couple Jacques Tréfouël and Thérèse Tréfouël, they clarified the active ingredient and breakdown product of Prontosil , the first sulfonamide used in antibacterial activity ( Gerhard Domagk 1934). In the 1950s he investigated a. a. the arrow poison curare and lived for a long time among the Indians . In experiments with curare descendants, he researched the muscle-relaxing effects of these arrow poisons and made them usable for therapy. Further research was in the area of antihistamines . He discovered the first antihistamines in the 1930s at the Pasteur Institute with Ernest Fourneau (head of the laboratory) and Anne-Marie Staub (various substances synthesized by Fourneau were tested, in particular F 929 mit Staub 1937), on the basis of which Bernard Halpern von Rhône- Poulenc developed the first drug antihistamines (Allergan and then Neo-Allergan) during World War II.

Publications

  • with Filomena Bovet: Structure et activité pharmacodynamique des médicaments du système nerveux végétatif. S. Karger, Basel 1948.
  • as edited by Filomena Bovet-Nitti and Giovanni B. Marini-Bettolo: Curare and Curare-like Agents. Elsevier, Amsterdam et al. 1959.
  • Etat actuel duprobleme du curare de Claude Bernard à l'anesthésiologie moderne: 4, commemorative lecture November 15, 1958. Stuttgart 1959.
  • Une chimie qui guérit. Histoire de la découverte des sulfamides (= Médecine et Sociétés ). Payot, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-228-88108-2 .

Web links

Commons : Daniel Bovet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Renate Wagner: Bovet, Daniel. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 202.
personal data
SURNAME Bovet, Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-Italian pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuchâtel
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1992
Place of death Rome