Julius Axelrod

Julius Axelrod was an American biochemist who discovered that the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is recaptured by the nerve ending that released it, a process called reuptake, and recycled for later use, a mechanism that explained how the nervous system regulates its own chemical signaling and later became the basis for antidepressant drugs such as SSRIs that work by blocking reuptake. He shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler for discoveries concerning the humoral transmitters in nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation. Axelrod began his research career working with Bernard Brodie at Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1946, joined the National Heart Institute at the National Institutes of Health in 1949, earned his PhD from George Washington University in 1955 despite having begun his major research before completing formal graduate training, and continued his work at the National Institutes of Health until his death in 2004. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1979.