The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988
Awarded on: 1988-10-17
"for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment"
Affiliations:
- London University, King's College Hospital Medical School – London, United Kingdom
Sir James W. Black
Born: 1924-06-14 in Uddingston, Scotland
Gender: male
Field: Scottish doctor and pharmacologist (1924–2010)
Biography
Sir James Whyte Black was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist. Together with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, he shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988 for pioneering strategies for rational drug-design, which, in his case, led to the development of propranolol and cimetidine. Black established a Veterinary Physiology department at the University of Glasgow, where he became interested in the effects of adrenaline on the human heart. He went to work for ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1958 and, while there, developed propranolol, a beta blocker used for the treatment of heart disease. Black was also responsible for the development of cimetidine, an H2 receptor antagonist, a drug used to treat stomach ulcers.