Marthe VogtBorn 8 Sep 1903; died 9 Sep 2003 at age 100.German-British pharmacologist who left Nazi Germany for Britain and became a leading authority on neurotransmitters in the brain. In 1936 she co-authored a classic paper proving that acetylcholine from nerves originating in the spinal cord triggers movement in muscles. She later showed that the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine help brain cells communicate. Her classic paper on sympathin, published in 1954, helped to pave the way to transforming the lives of the mentally ill. Modern anti-depressant drug therapy is grounded in increasing the availability of amines, predicated on the idea that amines are present and active in the brain in the first place, something which Vogt did much to establish. |