Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian

Edgar Adrian, 1932

Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian OM (born November 30, 1889 in London , † August 4, 1977 in Cambridge ) was a British physiologist . For his discoveries in the field of the functions of neurons, he and Charles Scott Sherrington received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1932 .

biography

Edgar Douglas Adrian was the second son of Alfred Douglas Adrian and completed his education at the Westminster School near Westminster Abbey in London. From 1908 he began his science studies at Trinity College , Cambridge . His studies focused primarily on physiology . In 1911 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in five different subjects with excellent grades.

1913 Adrian was awarded a research fellowship for his work on the functioning of nerves and he began the same year to study medicine . He completed his clinical studies at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and in 1915 he was also able to successfully complete this study. Until 1919, during the entire First World War , he worked clinically in the field of neurology and mainly treated soldiers with various neurological diseases. He then returned to Cambridge, where he worked at the Physiological Institute and gave courses on the human nervous system . At the time, his research focused on basic research into sensory physiology and the conduction of excitation in the nerves. From 1925 he began his work on sensory organs using electrical methods, which would later bring him the Nobel Prize.

On June 14, 1923, he married Hester Agnes Pinsent, with whom he had three children. These were his daughter Anne Pinsent Adrian, who later became the wife of the physiologist Richard Keynes (1919-2010), and the twins Richard Hume Adrian , 2nd Baron Adrian, who himself became a physiologist and, like his father, became a member of the Royal Society Jennet Adrian.

In 1929 Adrian Foulerton became professor at the Royal Society and in 1937 he replaced Sir Joseph Barcroft as professor of physiology at the University of Cambridge. He held this chair until 1951, then he was head of Trinity College until 1965. From 1955 to 1957 he was also President of Leicester University College, from 1958 Chancellor of Leicester University and from 1957 to 1959 Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University. From 1950 to 1955 he was President of the Royal Society and in 1954 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1934 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy .

He died in Cambridge on August 4, 1977.

Honors

In 1923 Adrian was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which awarded him the Royal Medal in 1934 and the Copley Medal in 1946 . Together with Charles Scott Sherrington , he received the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries in the field of the functions of neurons . In 1938 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society , and in 1941 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1942 he was awarded the Order of Merit and in 1955 ennobled Baron Adrian of Cambridge . Since 1946 he was a member of the Académie des Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Work

Adrian's earliest work on neurophysiology was done during his studies with Keith Lucas , who died in a plane crash in 1916. Adrian and Lucas tried to measure the nerve impulses, but failed due to the very imprecise measurement methods and the largely unsuitable nerve preparations.

Edgar Douglas Adrian researched the “all or nothing” law (ANG) in nerve excitation at an early age. In 1925 he developed a method for examining and displaying very weak action potentials on individual nerves and muscle fibers . To do this, he isolated individual nerve fibers and passed the electrical impulses measured in them on to amplifiers that were built in the radio industry . With this setup he was able to make the very weak impulses, whose voltage is in the range of a few microvolt and whose impulses only last a few milliseconds, measurable and show that the strength of a stimulus is coded by the frequency of the triggered action potentials ( pulse frequency coding ). Together with his colleagues, he demonstrated that the stimulus moves as an electrical wave along the nerve, thereby changing the electrical potential of the fiber. He also demonstrated a short break between the individual impulses, the refractory period . Through comparative studies, Adrian also showed that the basic nerve function of sensory and motor nerves does not differ.

In later work, Adrian showed that nerves also transport substances from the cell body to the synapses , including amino acids , proteins and nutrients . After 1932 he devoted himself to the development of electrical rhythms in the brain and in 1934 he came across the work of Hans Berger on electroencephalography and recognized the scope of the discovery. In the field of sensory physiology , Adrian concentrated his work on researching the sense of smell , he also worked on the receptors for the sense of balance in the inner ear and the links between the sensory and motor brain areas .

Works

Edgar Douglas Adrian published a number of publications in professional journals during his academic career. He also wrote the following monographs:

• The Basis of Sensation (1927)
• The Mechanism of Nervous Action (1932)
• Factors Determining Human Behavior (1937, part of the team of authors).
• The Physical Background of Perception (1947)

literature

• Edgar Baron Adrian of Cambridge , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/1977 of October 31, 1977, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Bernhard Kupfer: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-491-72451-1
• Brockhaus Nobel Prizes - Chronicle of Outstanding Achievements . Brockhaus, Mannheim 2004, ISBN 3-7653-0492-1
• Cornelus Borck: Adrian, Edgar Douglas. In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 8.

Web links

Commons : Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the award ceremony for Edgar Douglas Adrian in 1932

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 27, 2015

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Adrian 1955-1977	Richard Adrian