Background

Herbert Gasser was born on July 5, 1888, in Platteville, United States. Gasser’s father, Herman, was born in the Tyrol and emigrated as a boy to the United States, where he became a country doctor. His mother, Jane Elizabeth Griswold, came from an old Connecticut family. She trained as a teacher in the state Normal School of Platteville.

Education

Herbert attended the State Normal School of Platteville. He entered the University of Wisconsin to major in zoology. Having completed quickly the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts degree, he took courses in the newly organized medical school. As the university was then only a half-school (two years) Gasser transferred to Johns Hopkins University, where the approach to medicine exactly suited his aims. He received his medical degree in 1915.

Career

While still a student at the University of Wisconsin, Herbert was named an instructor in pharmacology in 1911. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1915, he returned to the University of Wisconsin as a pharmacology instructor. In 1916 Gasser moved to the department of physiology at Washington University, St. Louis. In the summer of 1918, he joined the Armed Forces Chemical Warfare Service in Washington. After the Armistice, he returned to Washington University, where he was made a professor of pharmacology in 1921. In 1931 Gasser moved to New York City and became a professor of physiology at Cornell Medical College. In 1935 he became the second director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. He remained in that position until 1953.

On retirement, Gasser continued active research for nearly ten years. From 1923 to 1925 Gasser was in Europe working with A. V. Hill at University College, London; Sir Henry Dale at the National Institute for Medical Research; Walter Straub at Munich; and Louis Lapicque at the Sorbonne.

Gasser’s early work, dictated by the exigencies of World War I, was concerned largely with problems of traumatic shock and blood volume. Only after the war, he wrote his first work on nerves with H. S. Newcomer. It concerned application of thermionic vacuum tubes to the study of nerve action currents. Then Gasser collaborated with Erlanger in studying the barely detectable electrical impulses carried by isolated mammalian nerve fibres. By 1924 they had succeeded in adapting the oscillograph to physiological research, enabling them to visualize amplified nerve impulses on a fluorescent screen. Using this device, they demonstrated that different nerve fibres exist for the transmission of specific kinds of impulses, such as those of pain, cold, or heat. Their work also made it possible to construct improved recording machines to diagnose brain and nervous disorders and to ascertain the success of treatments for these diseases. This work led to their recognition in 1944, when they jointly received the Nobel Prize. Gasser used his prize money to fund further research into the subject.

Achievements

• Herbert Gasser was an eminent physiologist. He was a co-recipient with Joseph Erlanger of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for fundamental discoveries concerning the functions of different kinds of nerve fibres. In 1945 the Association of American Physicians awarded Gasser its Kober Medal.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Journal Of Experimental Medicine 1964
  • Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity 1969

Views

It is difficult in the days of near-universal television to imagine the early difficulties of oscillographic recording. Light intensity was so low that many repetitions of the nerve response were required to produce a photographic image, and tubes lasted but a few hours. Some consequences of these necessities were from one point of view essentially artifactual in nature. Typically, Gasser always was aware of, and concerned with, the possibilities of an artifact. When it became possible to record single responses, it was apparent that they differed from those recorded during repetitive activity. A clue to the difference was found in a subsequent study of the subnormal state of nerve which, by responding repetitively, had influenced the early recordings.

Membership

Gasser was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a number of professional societies.

Interests

• Music, history, literature, and travel

Connections

Gasser had never married.

Father:

Herman Gasser

Mother:

Elisabeth Griswold Gasser

colleague:

Joseph Erlanger

colleague:

Louis Lapicque

colleague:

Walther Straub

colleague:

Henry Hallett Dale

colleague:

Archibald Hill

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography