Henry Hallett Dale

Sir Henry Hallett Dale, OM, GBE ( born June 9, 1875 in London, † 23 July 1968 in New York ) was a British biochemist.

Life

Dale studied physiology and zoology at the University of Cambridge, 1903 was for four months with Paul Ehrlich in Frankfurt and then worked as a pharmacologist at University College London, where he met Otto Loewi 1905. From 1904 he was head of the Physiological Research Laboratory of Wellcome in London. In 1909 he received his MD degrees in medicine at Cambridge. He had his medical training also at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In 1914, he took a management role (Director of the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology ) at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. He has worked on the pharmacological effects of ergot alkaloids and as tyramine and histamine. In 1906 he discovered in the pituitary gland, the hormone oxytocin. He noted that during birth and through breast feeding has an important function.

Dale insulated with colleagues in many years of work acetylcholine from fungi and discovered the possible role as a neurotransmitter (c. 1914 ), which was then detected by Loewi. Loewi in 1921, that in stimulation of nerves in the frog heart, a called by him Vagusstoff chemical substance was released, which then identified as Dale acetylcholine. This substance could also directly stimulate the heart, thus the chemical transmission of nerve signals was detected.

The principle of Dale refers to the hypothesis that each nerve cell uses only one neurotransmitter, which ( was instead the coexistence principle of Tomas Hökfelt propagated ) but much later than it turned out wrong. The naming of the principle comes from John C. Eccles (1954 ), which referred to a lecture by Dale 1934, Dale himself has this principle but never explicitly formulated in his writings. In the 1940s, he argued with Eccles whether nerve signals are chemically (Dale) or electrically ( Eccles ) transferred to the synapses. Later it was recognized that the transfer usually takes place chemically, sometimes electric.

In 1914 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1924, the Royal Medal in 1937 and the Copley Medal awarded him. In 1932 he was knighted. The British Crown awarded him the Order of Merit. He and Otto Loewi received together " for their discoveries in the chemical transmission of nerve impulses " 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The German Pharmacological Society honored him in 1962 with the Schmiedeberg badge. Dale was from 1932 a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Dale was from 1928 to 1942 director of the National Institute for Medical Research.

The lunar crater Dale is named after him. His brother Benjamin Dale was a composer. Dale was married in 1904 and had one son and two daughters.