Abstract
PROF. JOHN JACOB ABEL, who has just been elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, is the doyen of American pharmacologists. He is one ofthe best known and widely beloved personalities in medical science, in hisown and other countries. After graduation, he worked under C. Ludwig in Leipzig and O. Schmiedeberg in Strassburg. Returning to the United States, he became professor of pharmacology at Ann Arbor, Michigan, migrated from there in 1893 to be the first professor of pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, and held this chair with great distinction for nearly forty years. Prof. Abel's direct contributions to science have been chiefly on the chemical side of pharmacology. He was the first to bring to practical completion the isolation of epinephrine (adrenaline) ; later he discovered the same substance in the skin glands of a South American toad, from which he also isolated the toxic principle ‘bufagin’; and he was the first to crystallize insulin. Among many other achievements, he devised methods for studying the diffusible constituents of the living blood, and the reconstitution of its plasma after hæmorrhage. Even in his retirement he is actively engaged in new and important researches on tetanus toxin. Throughout medical science in the United States his influence has been spread by his pupils, inspired by the example of a long life of selfless devotion to the pursuit of knowledge.
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Prof. J. J. Abel, For. Mem. R.S. Nature 141, 963 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141963a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141963a0