Erwin Neher biography
Date of birth : 1944-03-20
Date of death : -
Birthplace : Landsberg, Germany
Nationality : German
Category : Science and Technology
Last modified : 2011-09-21
Credited as : biophysicist, Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine,
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Erwin Neher studied physics at the Technical University of Munich from 1963 to 1966. In 1966, He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US. He spent a year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and earned a Masters Degree in Biophysics.
In 1986, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Bert Sakmann. In 1987, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.
For their collaborative research into how cells communicate, Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1991. Their work has provided a clearer explanation of the cause of diabetes, cystic fibrosis, epilepsy and other neuromuscular disorders. They are best known for developing the patch-clamp technique, a new method for observing the tiny electrical currents produced in ion channels (tube-like passageways from the inside to the outside of a cell).
Awards:
Fulbright 1966
Nobel Prize for Medicine 1991 (with Bert Sakmann)
