'Daniel Bovet' (
March 23,
1907 –
April 8,
1992) was a Swiss-born
Italian pharmacologist who won the 1957
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of drugs that block the actions of specific
neurotransmitters. He is best known for his discovery in 1937 of
antihistamines, which block the neurotransmitter
histamine and are used in
allergy medication. His other research included work on
chemotherapy,
sulfa drugs, the
sympathetic nervous system, the pharmacology of
curare, and other neuropharmacological interests.
Bovet was born in
Neuchâtel,
Switzerland. He was one of the few people who learned
Esperanto as a
first language.He graduated from the
University of Geneva in 1927 and received his doctorate in 1929. Beginning in 1929 until 1947 he worked at the
Pasteur Institute in
Paris. He then moved in 1947 to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Superior Institute of Health) in
Rome. In 1964, he became a professor in at the
University of Sassari in Italy. From 1969 to 1971, he was the head of the National Research Council in Rome before stepping down to become a professor at the
University of Rome La Sapienza. He retired in 1982.
References
★ ''Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962'', Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
External link
★
Nobel Prize biography