James Black (pharmacologist)

Sir James Whyte Black was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist, born in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, on 14 June 1924, the fourth of five sons of a Baptist family. Brought up in Fife, he won a scholarship to the University of St Andrews at the age of 15 and graduated with an MB ChB in 1946. He established a Veterinary Physiology department at the University of Glasgow, then went to work for ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1958, where he developed propranolol, a beta blocker for heart disease, and later cimetidine, an H2 receptor antagonist used to treat stomach ulcers. He became professor and head of pharmacology at University College London in 1973, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976, and shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings for pioneering strategies for rational drug design. He died on 22 March 2010.