Putting physiology into the Nobel Prize: 2004 marks 100th anniversary of Pavl...( Bethesda MD (Oct. 6 2004) Richard Ax...)

Bethesda, MD (Oct. 6, 2004) Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck's receiving the Nobel Prize highlights the fact that the health sciences award is for physiology OR medicine. That is, either for a medical breakthrough per se, or like Axel and Buck's work, research in the broad context of the health sciences, of which physiology is arguably the most inclusive.

[A comprehensive review article on smell, "Olfaction: From odorant molecules to the olfactory cortex," appeared News in Physiological Science (NIPS, see below), June 2004, by Anna Menini et al. Citing Buck and Axel's 1991 article in Cell, the authors note: "It was only after the discovery in 1991 of a large multigene family of odorant receptors that several specific questions (about the nature of smell) could be answered."]

Three years after the inception of the Nobel Prizes in 1901, Ivan Pavlov still the world's most famous physiologist won the award "for physiology," making the 2004 award the 100th anniversary of Pavlov's receiving the first "physiology" Nobel.

In fact, Pavlov was nominated for the first Prize in 1901, and even received a five-day visit from Nobel Prize representatives at his St. Petersburg, Russia laboratory, which was partly financed by Alfred Nobel, an early fan of Pavlov's.

But it wasn't until 1904 that Pavlov won the award, to quote the citation: "in recognition of his works on the physiology of digestion with which works he transformed and broadened substantially the knowledge in this field."

Pavlov made many contributions to physiology and medicine and was key in recognizing the important link between the two. According to Gerard P. Smith in his article "Pavlov and integrative physiology," (American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, September 2000), Pavlov's "unexpected" discovery was that "psychic events" affected "physiological function. From this time on it was clear that if integrative physiology was
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5-Oct-2004

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