Andrew Huxley

Sir Andrew Huxley
Huxley in 1963
Born	Andrew Fielding Huxley (1917-11-22)22 November 1917 Hampstead, London, England
Died	30 May 2012(2012-05-30) (aged 94) Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, England[citation needed]
Nationality	British
Fields	physiologist and biophysicist
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Known for	nerve action potentials
Notable awards	1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Spouse	Jocelyn R.G. Pease (1947-2003; her death)

Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley, OM, FRS (22 November 1917 – 30 May 2012) was an English physiologist and biophysicist.

Early years

See also: Huxley family

Huxley was the youngest son of the writer and editor Leonard Huxley by his second wife Rosalind Bruce, and hence half-brother of the writer Aldous Huxley and fellow biologist Julian Huxley, and grandson of the biologist T. H. Huxley. He studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1947 he married Jocelyn Richenda Gammell Pease (1925–2003), the daughter of the geneticist Michael Pease and his wife Helen Bowen Wedgwood, a daughter of the first Lord Wedgwood, and is thus affiliated with the Darwin–Wedgwood family. They have one son and five daughters:

• Janet Rachel Huxley (born 20 April 1948)
• Stewart Leonard Huxley (born 19 December 1949)
• Camilla Rosalind Huxley (born 12 March 1952)
• Eleanor Bruce Huxley (born 21 February 1959)
• Henrietta Catherine Huxley (born 25 December 1960)
• Clare Marjory Pease Huxley (born 4 November 1962)

Career

He won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his experimental and mathematical work with Alan Hodgkin on the basis of nerve action potentials, the electrical impulses that enable the activity of an organism to be coordinated by a central nervous system. Hodgkin and Huxley shared the prize that year with John Eccles, who was cited for research on synapses. Hodgkin and Huxley's findings led the pair to hypothesize the existence of ion channels, which were isolated only decades later. Together with the Swiss physiologist Robert Stämpfli he evidenced the existence of saltatory conduction in myelinated nerve fibres.

Huxley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 17 March 1955. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on 12 November 1974. Sir Andrew was then appointed to the Order of Merit on 11 November 1983.

Huxley passed away on 30 May 2012 in his home in Grantchester, England.

Nobel Prize

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 used the giant axon of the 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 started at the University of Cambridge, beginning in 1935 with frog sciatic nerve, and soon after they continued their work using squid giant axons at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth. In 1939, reporting work done in Plymouth, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley published a short paper in the journal Nature announcing their achievement of recording action potentials from inside a nerve fibre. Research was interrupted by World War II but after resuming their experimental work in Plymouth, the pair published their theory in 1952. In the paper, they describe one of the earliest computational models in biochemistry, that is the basis of most of the models used in Neurobiology during the following four decades. He continued to hold college and university posts in Cambridge until 1960, when he became head of the Department of Physiology at University College London. For his research, in 1963 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1969 he was appointed to a Royal Society Research Professorship which he holds in the Department of Physiology at University College London.

He maintained up to his death his position as a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, teaching in physiology, natural sciences and medicine. He was also a fellow of Imperial College London in 1980.

From his experimental work with Hodgkin, Huxley developed a set of differential equations that provided a mathematical explanation for nerve impulses—the "action potential". This work provided the foundation for the all of the current work on voltage-sensitive membrane channels, which are responsible for the functioning of animal nervous systems. Quite separately, he developed the mathematical equations for the operation of myosin "cross-bridges" that generate the sliding forces between actin and myosin filaments, which cause the contraction of skeletal muscles. These equations presented an entirely new paradigm for understanding muscle contraction, which has been extended to provide our understanding of almost all of the movements produced by cells above the level of bacteria.

See also

• Hodgkin-Huxley model

Further reading

• Huxley A.F. 1980. Reflections on muscle. The Sherrington Lectures XIV. Liverpool.

External links

• Biography of Andrew Huxley
• Andrew Huxley interviewed by Alan Macfarlane, 5 October 2007 (film)

References

Academic offices
Preceded by Alexander Robertus Todd	President of the Royal Society 1980–1985	Succeeded by George Porter
Preceded by Richard John Harrison	Fullerian Professor of Physiology 1967–1973	Succeeded by Max Ferdinand Perutz
Preceded by Sir Alan Hodgkin	Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 1984–1990	Succeeded by Sir Michael Atiyah