Joseph Erlanger

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Science & Tech

Joseph Erlanger

American physiologist

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Feb 29, 2024 • Article History

Category: Science & Tech

Born:: Jan. 5, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.

Died:: Dec. 5, 1965, St. Louis, Mo. (aged 91)

Awards And Honors:: Nobel Prize (1944)

Subjects Of Study:: axon; nerve impulse

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Joseph Erlanger (born Jan. 5, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—died Dec. 5, 1965, St. Louis, Mo.) was an American physiologist, who received (with Herbert Gasser) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for discovering that fibres within the same nerve cord possess different functions. Erlanger’s research into nerve function was the product of a profitable collaboration with Gasser, one of his students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1906–10). Soon after Erlanger’s appointment as professor of physiology at Washington University, St. Louis (1910–46), Gasser joined him there, and they began studying ways in which the recently developed field ...(100 of 212 words)

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