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The search seeks the exact word or phrase that you type, so if you donât find your choice, try searching for a key word in your topic or recheck the spelling of a word or name. Sir Bernard Katz Sir Bernard Katz (1911-2003), German-born British biophysicist and recipient of the 1970 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, which he shared with Swedish physiologist Ulf von Euler and American biochemist Julius Axelrod. The three were honored for their discoveries concerning the activation, inactivation, and storage mechanisms of neurotransmitters, chemicals in the body that stimulate nerve and muscle cells. Katz was born in Leipzig, Germany. He earned a medical degree at the University of Leipzig in 1934 and obtained a doctoral degree in physiology from the University of London in 1938. During World War II, Katz served in the Royal Australian Air Force. In 1946 he returned to London and joined the faculty of University College, London. In the 1950s Katz and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments that revealed the precise action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which was known to be the primary chemical that monitors nerve and muscle cell stimulation. They found that acetylcholine was constantly being released in small amounts from the end of neurons. Scientists previously had believed that a neuron at rest emitted no signal at all. Katz and his colleagues also found that acetylcholine was released in precise amounts from vesicles (or sacs) located at the end of each neuron. The number of vesicles at each neuron determines the amount of acetylcholine released. In 1977 Katz contributed to the discovery that the release of acetylcholine was caused by the movement of calcium ions across the gap between the neurons. | |
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