During a life devoted to the medical sciences, Herbert Spencer Gasser mastered the fields of physiology, electronics, optics, photography, applied mathematics, and pharmacology. His studies with Joseph Erlanger on nerve properties, using new techniques to measure the weak electrical currents of nerve fibers, were rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 1944. This work opened an era of research on pathways of the nervous system and has led to a better understanding of the mechanisms of pain and reflex actions. Gasser's career as scholar, professor, and experimenter culminated in 1935, when he became the second scientific director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City.

Herbert Gasser was born in Platteville, Wisconsin. His mother, Jane Griswold, who descended from an early Connecticut family, was a teacher trained in Wisconsin's first State Normal School in Platteville. Gasser's father, Herman, was born in the Tyrol and came to the United...