Medical Research Council (UK)
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a UK research organization specializing in medicine and related biological disciplines. It is one of seven such Research Councils and has three main institutes in Cambridge , Mill Hill and Hammersmith and 35 smaller organizations across the UK. It also operates branch offices in Gambia and Uganda .
The organization was founded as the Medical Research Committee and Advisory Council in 1913 and received its current name in 1920. The MRC is the main financial sponsor of the Francis Crick Institute .
Research services
Numerous groundbreaking research achievements have been made with the support of the MRC. Scientists affiliated with the MRC received 23 Nobel Prizes . Important discoveries were:
- Evidence by Edward Mellanby that rickets is diet related
- evidence that influenza is a viral disease (1918)
- the discovery of the first neurotransmitter (acetylcholine) by Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi (Nobel Prize 1936)
- the development of penicillin by Alexander Fleming , Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey (Nobel Prize 1945)
- the discovery of the link between lung cancer and tobacco smoking by Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill (1956)
- the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid by James D. Watson , Francis Crick , Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins (Nobel Prize 1962)
- Development of magnetic resonance tomography in 1973 by Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur (Nobel Prize 2003)
- Development of monoclonal antibodies by César Milstein and Georges Köhler 1975 (Nobel Prize 1984)
Web links
- Medical Research Council (mrc.ac.uk)
Individual evidence
- ^ Nobel Prize Winners. From: mrc.ukri.org, Retrieved September 28, 2018.