Background
Henry Dale was born on July 9, 1875 in London, United Kingdom. He was the son of Charles (in business) and Frances (Hallet) Dale. Dale was the second son of seven children born to his parents.
Pharmacologist physiologist scientist
Henry Dale was born on July 9, 1875 in London, United Kingdom. He was the son of Charles (in business) and Frances (Hallet) Dale. Dale was the second son of seven children born to his parents.
After graduating from Tollington Park College, London (now Tollington School), and the Leys School, Cambridge, Dale entered Trinity College at Cambridge University in 1894. His academic skills gained him first honors in the natural sciences and the Coutts-Trotter studentship at Trinity College.
Dale left Cambridge in 1900 to finish his clinical work in medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Nevertheless, he received his bachelor’s degree in 1903, and his medical doctorate in 1909 from Trinity College.
Starling and his colleague Bayliss identified secretin, a substance secreted by the small intestine, as the first hormone, and Dale collaborated with the pair in further studies on the impact of secretin on cells in the pancreas. Dale’s work with Starling and Bayliss instilled in him the idea that physiological functions could be affected by such chemicals as hormones. It was also in this laboratory that Dale first met Otto Loewi, who at the time was visiting University College from Germany. Dale and Loewi would go on to become lifelong friends, collaborators, and co-recipients of the 1936 Nobel Prize.
In 1904 Dale spent three months working in the laboratory of the chemist Paul Ehrlich in Germany. Members of Ehrlich’s laboratory were studying the relationship between the chemical structure of biological molecules and their effect on immunological responses, research that would garner for Ehrlich the 1908 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. As did the experience at Starling’s laboratory in London, Ehrlich's research introduced Dale to the potential impact that chemicals can have on mediating biological and physiological processes.
After Dale returned to Starling’s London laboratory, he was recommended to chemical manufacturer Henry Wellcome for a position with London’s Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, a commercial laboratory. Established in the 1890s to produce an antitoxin for diphtheria, the laboratories, by the first decade of the 1900s, had begun to promote and pursue basic scientific research. Against the advice of colleagues who distrusted the commercial nature of the laboratory, Dale accepted the post.
Dale’s research on the effects of ergot also introduced him to ongoing efforts to study the central nervous system. T. R. Elliott, Dale’s friend and colleague at Cambridge, postulated that epinephrine (a neurotransmitter or substance that transmits nerve impulses) when applied by itself could produce an effect similar to stimulating the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is responsible for involuntary physiological functions, such as breathing and digestion. This system’s sympathetic branch affects such functions as increasing heart rate in response to fear and opening arteries to increased blood flow during exercise. Dale built on Elliott’s research and showed, with the chemist George Barger, that epinephrine is one chemical in a class of such chemicals that has “sympathomimetic” properties.
Dale’s serendipitous accomplishments drew the attention of Henry Wellcome, and Dale was promoted in 1906 to the directorship of the Wellcome Laboratories.
Dale resigned from the Wellcome Laboratories in 1914, and joined the scientific staff of the Medical Research Committee; after 1920 this group came to be known as the Medical Research Council. The onset of World War I placed new demands on Dale’s administrative and scientific skills. He joined the war effort by engaging in physiological studies of shock, dysentery, gangrene, and the effects of inadequate diet. After the war, the Medical Research Council evolved to become the National Institute for Medical Research, and Dale served as the organization’s first director from 1928 until 1942. Although he continued to perform physiological research, administrative and public duties for the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Medical Research limited the time and energy that he could devote to the laboratory. His research efforts during the 1920s continued the work he began during the war—studying how histamine contributes to the swelling of tissue after traumatic shock.
By the 1940s Dale was devoting much of his time to administrative duties in various organizations.
During World War II, he served as chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the War Cabinet.
Having been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1914, he served as secretary from 1925 to 1935, and as president from 1940 to 1945.
In later years Dale worked with Thorvald Madsen of Copenhagen directing an international campaign to standardize drugs and vaccines. The 1925 conference of the Health Organization of the League of Nations adopted such standards for insulin and pituitary products largely because of Dale’s efforts. He repeated these efforts to see into law the Therapeutic Substances Act in England. His other political activities included promoting both the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the value of scientific research.
In 1904, Dale had married his first cousin Elen Harriet Hallett and had a son and two daughters. One of their daughters, Alison Sarah Dale, married Alexander R. Todd, who too won the Nobel Prize and served as President of the Royal Society from 1940 to 1945.