Robert F. Furchgott

Robert Francis Furchgott (4 June 1916 to 19 May 2009) was an American biochemist and Nobel Prize winner who contributed to the discovery of nitric oxide as a transient cellular signal in mammalian systems. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Arthur Furchgott, who ran a department store, and Pena Sorentrue Furchgott. He graduated in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1937 and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Northwestern University in 1940. He was a faculty member and professor of pharmacology at Cornell University Medical College from 1940 to 1949, at Washington University School of Medicine from 1949 to 1956, at SUNY Brooklyn from 1956 to 1989, and at the University of Miami from 1989 through the end of his career. His work on nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system was recognised by the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.