Herbert Spencer Gasser

Herbert Spencer Gasser (1888 to 1963) was an American physiologist who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for his work with action potentials in nerve fibers, awarded jointly with Joseph Erlanger while on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis. Born in Platteville, Wisconsin, he finished undergraduate studies in zoology at the University of Wisconsin in two years, studied physiology under Erlanger, and received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1915. He moved to Washington University in 1916 and became professor of pharmacology in 1921, then professor of physiology at Cornell Medical College in 1931, and in 1935 became the second director of the Rockefeller Institute, a post he held until 1953.