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( Otto Loewi)
Otto Loewi (June 3, 1873 – December 25, 1961) was a German pharmacologist whose discovery of acetylcholine helped enhance medical therapy. The discovery earned for him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936 which he shared with Sir Henry Dale. He has been referred to as the "Father of Neuroscience." Loewi was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He received his medical doctoral degree from University of Strasbourg (then part of Germany) in 1896 where he also was a member of the fraternity Burschenschaft Germania Strassburg. He was never particularly interested in clinical work, so after seeing a number of deaths due to incurable diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, he decided to direct his energies to pharmacology research. Beginning in 1898, he spent many years in Austria, where his first lines of research were in the area of metabolism. Loewi investigated how vital organs respond to chemical and electrical stimulation. He also established their relative dependence on epinephrine for proper function. Consequently, he learnt how nerve impulses are transmitted by chemical messengers. The first chemical neurotransmitter that he identified was acetylcholine. In 1903, he accepted an appointment at the University of Graz in Austria, where he would remain until being forced out of the country in 1938. In 1905 he received Austrian citizenship.
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