Joseph Erlanger

Joseph Erlanger (1874 to 1965) was an American physiologist best known for his contributions to neuroscience. Together with Herbert Spencer Gasser he identified several varieties of nerve fiber and established the relationship between action potential velocity and fiber diameter, and they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for these achievements. Born in San Francisco, he completed a Bachelor of Science in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1895 and an M.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1899. After posts at Johns Hopkins and as the first chair of physiology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he became professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 1910, where Gasser joined his laboratory. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1922.