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Gasser, Herbert Spencer
Gasser, Herbert Spencer DJ Lanska, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Great Lakes VA Healthcare System, Tomah, WI, USA r 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction American physiologist Herbert Spencer Gasser (1888–1963) shared the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his collaborator, Joseph Erlanger (1874–1965), for their work on ‘‘the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibers.’’ The award recognized their roles in developing the amplifier with cathode-ray oscilloscope as a basic tool of modern neurophysiology.
Early Career Gasser was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, then a small mining community well past its heyday as a source of lead ore. As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Gasser was inspired by the lectures in physiology given by Erlanger, who was then Professor of Physiology there. After completing a bachelor’s degree in zoology (1910) and a master’s degree in anatomy (1911), Gasser went to medical school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore (as had Erlanger previously) and after graduation in 1915 he returned to the University of Wisconsin for a year of research in pharmacology. In 1916, Gasser was invited to join Erlanger at Washington University in St. Louis, where Erlanger had accepted the chair of physiology. From 1917 to 1919, during World War I, Gasser and Erlanger published 11 papers on traumatic shock. In 1921, at the fecilitation of Erlanger, Gasser became professor of pharmacology at Washington University. From 1923 to 1925 Gasser was granted a leave of absence to study in Europe, working on investigations involving muscle contractions and excitation of nerves: in London with English physiologist and Nobel laureate Archibald Vivian (A.V.) Hill (1886–1977), and with English physiologist and pharmacologist (and later Nobel laureate) Sir Henry Dale (1875–1968); in Munich with German pharmacologist Walther Straub (1874–1944); and in Paris with French neurophysiologist Louis Lapicque (1866–1952).
The Nerve Action Potential Before the work of Gasser and Erlanger in the 1920s, nerve action potentials were too weak and too brief to measure accurately with available instruments. In 1920, one of Gasser’s former classmates at Johns Hopkins, H. Sidney Newcomer, developed a three-stage amplifier that would amplify nerve impulses 100 000-fold. A year later, Gasser and Erlanger constructed a cathode-ray oscilloscope that could record the nerve impulse – a remarkable technical breakthrough. By 1922 Gasser and Erlanger used this instrument to study the details of nerve transmission, ultimately finding inter alia that: (1) there is an initial, large, and rapid deviation in electric potential (the spike), that rises and falls, followed by a sequence of small, slow potential changes (the after-potential); (2) the
Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, Volume 2
composite action potential of a nerve is complex, with the various deflections representing groups of fibers conducting at different speeds; and (3) larger nerve fibers conduct electrical impulses faster than smaller ones. Erlanger and Gasser ultimately identified three distinct nerve conduction patterns based on the pattern of spikes and after potentials: The fastest-conducting and thickest fibers were designated A fibers, the intermediate ones were designated B fibers, and the slowest-conducting and thinnest were designated C fibers. However, Gasser and Erlanger disagreed on the quantitative relationship between fiber size and conduction velocity for the myelinated nerve fibers: although Erlanger believed that conduction velocity was proportional to the square of the diameter, Gasser showed that it was instead a linear function of the diameter. Erlanger and Gasser’s classic monograph summarizing their research findings, Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity (1937), was based on their Eldridge Reeves Johnson Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in 1936.
Later Career In 1931 Gasser left St. Louis to become professor of physiology and head of the Medical Department at Cornell University in New York City. In 1935 he was appointed as the second director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), succeeding Simon Flexner (1863– 1946). As director of the Rockefeller Institute for nearly two decades, Gasser led the Institute’s transition from its original narrow emphasis on pathology and infectious disease to a broader concern with human disease in general, despite the complex challenges created by the Great Depression, World War II, and postwar changes in the funding of scientific research. On Gasser’s retirement from the Institute in 1953, he returned to laboratory research, addressing unfinished work on differentiation of the C fibers with the aid of electron microscopy.
Honors and Awards In addition to the Nobel Prize, Gasser’s scientific contributions were recognized by many other honors and awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences (1934) and the American Philosophical Society (1937), the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Lectureship (‘‘Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity,’’ 1936), the Kober Medal from the American Association of Physicians (1954), and honorary doctorates from various universities, including Columbia University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, the Free University of Brussels, the Catholic University of Louvain, Oxford University, and the universities of Paris, Pennsylvania, Rochester, and Wisconsin.
See also: Dale, Henry Hallett. Erlanger, Joseph
doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-385157-4.00886-1
409
410
Gasser, Herbert Spencer
Further Reading Erlanger J and Gasser HS (1922) The cathode ray oscillograph as a means of recording nerve action currents and induction shocks. American Journal of Physiology 59: 473–475. Erlanger J and Gasser HS (1937) Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Erlanger J, Gasser HS, and Bishop GH (1924) The compound nature of the action current of nerve as disclosed by the cathode ray oscillograph. American Journal of Physiology 70: 624–626. Gasser HJ and Newcomer HS (1921) Physiological action currents in the phrenic nerve. An application of the thermionic vacuum tube to nerve physiology. American Journal of Physiology 57: 1–26. Gasser HS (1950) Unmedullated fibers originating in dorsal root ganglia. The Journal of General Physiology 33: 651–690. Gasser HS (1955) Properties of dorsal root unmedullated fibers on the tgwo sides of the ganglion. The Journal of General Physiology 38: 709–728. Gasser HS (1964) Mammalian nerve fibers: Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1945. In: Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962, pp. 34–37. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company. Gasser HS and Erlanger J (1922) A study of the action currents of nerve with the cathode ray oscillograph. American Journal of Physiology 62: 496–524.
Gasser HS and Erlanger J (1927) The role played by the sizes of the constituent fibers of a nerve trunk in determining the form of its action potential wave. American Journal of Physiology 80: 522–527. Gasser HS and Grundfest J (1939) Axon diameters in relation to the spike dimensions and the conduction velocity in mammalian A fibers. American Journal of Physiology 127: 393–414. McComas AJ (2011) Galvani’s Spark: The Story of the Nerve Impulse. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Relevant Websites http://www.beckerarchives.wustl.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=2535&q= Gasser, Herbert S.: Vertical File Collection, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1944/# The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1944: Joseph Erlanger, Herbert S. Gasser.
Introduction American physiologist Herbert Spencer Gasser (1888–1963) shared the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his collaborator, Joseph Erlanger (1874–1965), for their work on ‘‘the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibers.’’ The award recognized their roles in developing the amplifier with cathode-ray oscilloscope as a basic tool of modern neurophysiology.
Early Career Gasser was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, then a small mining community well past its heyday as a source of lead ore. As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Gasser was inspired by the lectures in physiology given by Erlanger, who was then Professor of Physiology there. After completing a bachelor’s degree in zoology (1910) and a master’s degree in anatomy (1911), Gasser went to medical school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore (as had Erlanger previously) and after graduation in 1915 he returned to the University of Wisconsin for a year of research in pharmacology. In 1916, Gasser was invited to join Erlanger at Washington University in St. Louis, where Erlanger had accepted the chair of physiology. From 1917 to 1919, during World War I, Gasser and Erlanger published 11 papers on traumatic shock. In 1921, at the fecilitation of Erlanger, Gasser became professor of pharmacology at Washington University. From 1923 to 1925 Gasser was granted a leave of absence to study in Europe, working on investigations involving muscle contractions and excitation of nerves: in London with English physiologist and Nobel laureate Archibald Vivian (A.V.) Hill (1886–1977), and with English physiologist and pharmacologist (and later Nobel laureate) Sir Henry Dale (1875–1968); in Munich with German pharmacologist Walther Straub (1874–1944); and in Paris with French neurophysiologist Louis Lapicque (1866–1952).
The Nerve Action Potential Before the work of Gasser and Erlanger in the 1920s, nerve action potentials were too weak and too brief to measure accurately with available instruments. In 1920, one of Gasser’s former classmates at Johns Hopkins, H. Sidney Newcomer, developed a three-stage amplifier that would amplify nerve impulses 100 000-fold. A year later, Gasser and Erlanger constructed a cathode-ray oscilloscope that could record the nerve impulse – a remarkable technical breakthrough. By 1922 Gasser and Erlanger used this instrument to study the details of nerve transmission, ultimately finding inter alia that: (1) there is an initial, large, and rapid deviation in electric potential (the spike), that rises and falls, followed by a sequence of small, slow potential changes (the after-potential); (2) the
Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, Volume 2
composite action potential of a nerve is complex, with the various deflections representing groups of fibers conducting at different speeds; and (3) larger nerve fibers conduct electrical impulses faster than smaller ones. Erlanger and Gasser ultimately identified three distinct nerve conduction patterns based on the pattern of spikes and after potentials: The fastest-conducting and thickest fibers were designated A fibers, the intermediate ones were designated B fibers, and the slowest-conducting and thinnest were designated C fibers. However, Gasser and Erlanger disagreed on the quantitative relationship between fiber size and conduction velocity for the myelinated nerve fibers: although Erlanger believed that conduction velocity was proportional to the square of the diameter, Gasser showed that it was instead a linear function of the diameter. Erlanger and Gasser’s classic monograph summarizing their research findings, Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity (1937), was based on their Eldridge Reeves Johnson Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in 1936.
Later Career In 1931 Gasser left St. Louis to become professor of physiology and head of the Medical Department at Cornell University in New York City. In 1935 he was appointed as the second director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), succeeding Simon Flexner (1863– 1946). As director of the Rockefeller Institute for nearly two decades, Gasser led the Institute’s transition from its original narrow emphasis on pathology and infectious disease to a broader concern with human disease in general, despite the complex challenges created by the Great Depression, World War II, and postwar changes in the funding of scientific research. On Gasser’s retirement from the Institute in 1953, he returned to laboratory research, addressing unfinished work on differentiation of the C fibers with the aid of electron microscopy.
Honors and Awards In addition to the Nobel Prize, Gasser’s scientific contributions were recognized by many other honors and awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences (1934) and the American Philosophical Society (1937), the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Lectureship (‘‘Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity,’’ 1936), the Kober Medal from the American Association of Physicians (1954), and honorary doctorates from various universities, including Columbia University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, the Free University of Brussels, the Catholic University of Louvain, Oxford University, and the universities of Paris, Pennsylvania, Rochester, and Wisconsin.
See also: Dale, Henry Hallett. Erlanger, Joseph
doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-385157-4.00886-1
409
410
Gasser, Herbert Spencer
Further Reading Erlanger J and Gasser HS (1922) The cathode ray oscillograph as a means of recording nerve action currents and induction shocks. American Journal of Physiology 59: 473–475. Erlanger J and Gasser HS (1937) Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Erlanger J, Gasser HS, and Bishop GH (1924) The compound nature of the action current of nerve as disclosed by the cathode ray oscillograph. American Journal of Physiology 70: 624–626. Gasser HJ and Newcomer HS (1921) Physiological action currents in the phrenic nerve. An application of the thermionic vacuum tube to nerve physiology. American Journal of Physiology 57: 1–26. Gasser HS (1950) Unmedullated fibers originating in dorsal root ganglia. The Journal of General Physiology 33: 651–690. Gasser HS (1955) Properties of dorsal root unmedullated fibers on the tgwo sides of the ganglion. The Journal of General Physiology 38: 709–728. Gasser HS (1964) Mammalian nerve fibers: Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1945. In: Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962, pp. 34–37. Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company. Gasser HS and Erlanger J (1922) A study of the action currents of nerve with the cathode ray oscillograph. American Journal of Physiology 62: 496–524.
Gasser HS and Erlanger J (1927) The role played by the sizes of the constituent fibers of a nerve trunk in determining the form of its action potential wave. American Journal of Physiology 80: 522–527. Gasser HS and Grundfest J (1939) Axon diameters in relation to the spike dimensions and the conduction velocity in mammalian A fibers. American Journal of Physiology 127: 393–414. McComas AJ (2011) Galvani’s Spark: The Story of the Nerve Impulse. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Relevant Websites http://www.beckerarchives.wustl.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=2535&q= Gasser, Herbert S.: Vertical File Collection, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1944/# The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1944: Joseph Erlanger, Herbert S. Gasser.