Hodgkin, Sir Alan Lloyd

▪ 1999

      British physiologist (b. Feb. 5, 1914, Banbury, Eng.—d. Dec. 20, 1998, Cambridge, Eng.), shared (along with his countryman Sir Andrew Huxley and Australian scientist Sir John Eccles) the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the chemical processes involved in nerve conduction. After graduating (1936) from Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked (1937-38) at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City and spent some time at the Woods Hole (Mass.) Marine Biological Laboratory. It was there that he first dissected squid nerve fibres, structures that, owing to their comparatively large size, were ideally suited to his research. Because of his expertise in physics and mathematics, the British government called upon him to work on the development of airborne radar during World War II. In 1945 he joined the faculty at Cambridge. The central focus of his studies was the biomedical process by which nerve impulses travel along individual fibres. With Huxley, he elucidated the complementary roles of sodium and potassium ions in the transmission of nerve impulses, work for which they received the Nobel Prize. Hodgkin was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1948 and served as the society's president from 1970 to 1975. He held the posts of master of Trinity College (1974-84) and chancellor of the University of Leicester (1971-84). Among his many awards and honours were the Royal Medal (1958) and the Copley Medal (1985). He was knighted in 1972. In addition to his scientific papers, Hodgkin wrote an autobiography, Chance & Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War (1992).

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