science · 22 March 2010 · 14 years ago
death
Died 22 Mar 2010 at age 85 (born 14 Jun 1924).
Sir James Whyte Black was a Scottish pharmacologist who (along with George H. Hitchings and Gertrude B. Elion) received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for his development of two important drugs, propranolol and cimetidine. Propranolol was the first clinically useful beta-receptorblocking drug (1964). This type of drug is now being used in the treatment of coronary heart disease (angina pectoris, myocardial infarction) and hypertension. In 1972 Black characterized a new group of histamine receptors, H2-receptors, and subsequently developed the first clinically useful H2-receptorantagonist, cimetidine (Tagamet). This introduced a new principle in the treatment of peptic ulcer.
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