Axelrod, Julius
From GWUEncyc
Alumni
Julius Axelrod (1912-2004) shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970. Axelrod was born May 30, 1912 in New York City, and earned a B.S. degree from College of the City of New York in 1933, an M.A. from New York University in 1941, and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from George Washington University in 1955. (His son also received a degree from GW in 1967). Axelrod was a recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Achievement award in 1968, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1971, both from GW. His early research in chemistry was directed toward a systematic study of the mechanisms by which drugs are either activated in the body. These fundamental studies, carried out at the National Heart Institute, were important in establishing the rational basis for the use of many drugs in man and for the development of new therapeutic agents.
In 1955 he assumed duties at the National Institute of Mental Health. There he continued the isolation and characterization of several enzyme systems concerned with the metabolism of drugs and hormones. These led him into studies on the metabolism of noradrenalin and adrenalin, the humoral transmitters essential to the functioning of the sympathetic nervous system. He and his colleagues then elucidated the mechanisms involved in the storage and release of these neurohormones and the ways in which drugs alter these processes. These studies have had important implications in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and in the understanding of mental illness. Among the drugs their work helped spur were such selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors as Prozac. For “his discoveries concerning the humoral transmitters in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release, and inactivation,” Dr. Axelrod shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for 1970 with Sir Bernard Katz of the United Kingdom and Ulf von Euler of Sweden.
He served as a Consultant in Research to The George Washington University’s graduate school in the Department of Pharmacology and was also a lecturer. He was most active in training post doctoral students who came to his laboratory from around the world. His research was reported in over 200 papers and numerous chapters in books and symposia.
He was an unmistakable figure. For decades, he wore glasses with a darkened lens over his left eye -- after an accident in 1938 in which a bottle of ammonia exploded. As the Washington Post quoted "I used to wear a black patch over my eye when I was young," he once said. "It was very dashing, like Brenda Starr's husband."
A soft-spoken and wry-humored man, he said the esteem he received with the Nobel came at a price, notably that "people read my papers more carefully." He received an overwhelming number of invitations to speak but needed a way to winnow them. "I accept the ones I'm interested in, or," he said, "the ones in Paris. I love Paris." Julius Axelrod died December 29, 2004 in Rockville, Maryland.
Document Information
Images: 2
Photographic Credit: National Library of Medicine[1]; GW University Historical Photographs Collection
Author or Source: Alumni biographical files/RG0044; Washington Post article, December 30, 2004
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist
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