ALAN LLOYD HODGKIN

Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (1914-1998) is a British physiologist and biophysicist, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1963 for his work with Andrew Fielding Huxley on the basis of action potentials in nerves, the electrical impulses that enable the activity of an organism to be coordinated by a central nervous system. With Huxley he hypothesized the existence of ion channels, confirmed decades later.

The experimental measurements on which the pair based their action potential theory represent one of the earliest applications of a technique of electrophysiology known as the "voltage clamp". The second critical element of their research was the so-called giant axon of Atlantic squid (Loligo pealei), which enabled them to record ionic currents as they would not have been able to do in almost any other neuron, such cells being too small to study by the techniques of the time. The experiments took place at the University of Cambridge beginning in the 1930s and continuing into the 1940s, after interuption by World War II. The pair published their theory in 1952.

Australian Sir John Carew Eccles shared the 1963 award.