Measuring Nerve Impulses Sir Andrew Huxley went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study the physical sciences, but a suggestion from a friend led him to switch his interest to physiology. In 1939, Huxley began researching nerve conduction with Alan Hodgkin, and they were the first to electrically record from the inside of the nerve fiber. After World War II, Huxley and Hodgkin continued their work of electronically measuring the relation between potential across the membrane of the giant nerve fiber and the currents carried by the ions of sodium and potassium through it. Huxley, who was born on this date in 1917, solved a set of equations describing the basic ionic theory of nerve impulse. For his work, Huxley was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1963, which he shared with Alan Hodgkin and John Eccles.
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