Joseph Edanger , who shared with Herbert S. Gasser the 1944 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for discoveries concerning nerve fibers, was a leading figure in the maturation of American physiology during the first four decades of this century. After undergraduate studies at the University of California, he graduated as a high-ranking member of one of the pioneering classes at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (M.D. 1899). There he learned physiology from W. H. Howell, and rose to associate professor in the department (1900)(1901)(1902)(1903)(1904)(1905)(1906). He became the pro fessor of physiology at Wisconsin briefly (1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910) before taking the same position at the newly reorganized Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. There he taught until his retirement in 1946, joining with such colleagues as George Dock (medicine), Eugene Opie (pathology), Gasser (pharmacology), Edward Doisy, and Carl and Gerty Cod (biochemistry) to raise the school to the first rank among medical research institutions. 1
Erlanger's laboratory career was divided into two almost equally distinguished parts, dealing with cardiovascular-and neurophysiology. From 1904 to 1921 he published on blood pressure, did experiments on the conduction of excitation in the heart, and completed a long series of war-related studies with Gasser on the nature and treatment of traumatic shock. Especially noteworthy were his experiments of 1905 producing an artificial "heart block" in dogs, thereby firmly establishing the dependence of auriculoventricular conduction upon the bundle of His. 2 In 1920 Erlanger's prot6g6 Gasser, working in the physiology