Research: Two Wets & a Dry

Among the many mysteries of life, none is more baffling than the mechanism by which impulses from the brain are transmitted along nerve fibers and eventually to muscles, so that thought is translated into action. Some research ers have concentrated on the chemical aspects of the mechanism, and, because they work with aqueous solutions, they are known in their own esoteric circle as “wets.” Those who work with electrical circuitry are the “drys.” Neither group has yet been able to offer a complete explanation of nerve-impulse transmission, though each seems to have dug out part of the truth.

Last week, Stockholm’s Royal Caroline Institute played it both ways and decided to award the 1963 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine (worth $51,000) to two wets and a dry:

> Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, 49, research professor of Britain’s Royal Society, who works at Cambridge, and Andrew Fielding Huxley,* 45, of London’s University College, the wets, have worked together in detailed study of the giant nerve cells of squid.

>Sir John Carew Eccles, 60, professor of physiology at Australia’s National University at Canberra, the dry, used microelectrodes so tiny that they can be inserted into single nerve cells.

The wets and the dry had not done any research together, but Eccles modestly explained: “My work grows out of theirs.”

* Half-brother of Novelist Aldous and Biologist Sir Julian Huxley.