Otto Loewi (pronounced l-ee) made important early discoveries about how nerve impulses are transmitted. He found that nerve transmissions depend both on electrical stimulation and certain chemical substances (neurotransmitters) produced by nerve cells. For this discovery he shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Henry Hallett Dale, a British scientist who showed that chemical transmissions of nerve impulses take place in the voluntary, as well as the involuntary, nervous system.

Loewi was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on June 3, 1873, the son of Jakob Loewi, a wealthy Jewish wine merchant, and Anna Willstadter Loewi. As a young man, Loewi wanted to be an art historian, but he was dissuaded from pursuing this career by his parents, who urged him to study medicine instead. Although he had done poorly in mathematics and physics at the Frankfurt Gymnasium, he took their advice and, in 1891, entered the University...