science · 30 November 1889 · 135 years ago
birth
Born 30 Nov 1889; died 4 Aug 1977 at age 87.
English electrophysiologist who is one of the founders of modern neurophysiology. He shared (with Sir Charles Sherrington) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1932 for “for their discoveries regarding the functions of neurons.” While a student under Keith Lucas at Cambridge, Adrian discovered the “all-or-none” phenomenon (the relation between stimulus intensity and muscle-fibre contraction) in muscle-nerve preparations. During a career at Cambridge he developed the capillary electrometer to measure minute signals from nerve fibres and discovered the nature of coding of the motor and sensory impulses in afferent and efferent fibres. In the early 1930s, he advanced concepts of electro-encephalography, research on electrical brain waves.
OnThisDay.net