Squid Game 1: Excitation in the Archive | The Royal Society Blog

In the first half of a two-part article, historian of science Kathryn Maxson Jones describes the impact of squid giant axons on the history of neuroscience. Maxson Jones conducted part of her research at the MBL for her upcoming book, "Sea Change: The Squid Giant Axon and the Transformation of Neurobiology in the 20th Century," in which she explores "the intertwined histories of aquatic organisms, seaside laboratories like Plymouth [and the MBL], and biophysical and biochemical studies of the fundamental properties of nervous systems."

In September 1935, David Keynes Hill FRS (1915–2002), son of the physiologist Archibald Vivian (A V) Hill FRS (1886–1977), captured an informal colour portrait of his father alongside another biologist nearly three decades his junior. Hill and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin FRS (1914–1998) were seated in the garden of the Hill family’s South Devon vacation home, Three Corners, deep in conversation.

Thirteen years earlier, Hill had shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Meyerhof ForMemRS (1884-1951). This had primarily recognised Hill’s work in muscle contraction, but he had also published extensively on nervous excitation, the generation of electrical activity in nerves. In 1926, he became a Royal Society Foulerton Research Professor at University College, London. By 1935, when the photograph was taken, Hill was a world-renowned pioneer in studying the physical and chemical aspects of biological functions.

It was in the field of nervous excitation that Alan Hodgkin, then a recent graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, hoped to make his career. Hill had invited Hodgkin to Three Corners to do experiments at the nearby Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in Plymouth, founded in 1888. Many marine invertebrates, such as crabs, offered especially convenient material for experimental investigation after tissue dissection, owing to the large sizes of their nerve and muscle cells. Read rest of the article here.

Source: Squid Game 1: Excitation in the Archive | The Royal Society Blog