- British physiologist
engaged in research with Andrew Huxley on the mechanism of conduction
in peripheral nerves 1945-60. He devised techniques for measuring electric
currents flowing across a cell membrane. In 1963 they shared the Nobel
prize.
Hodgkin was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and educated at Cambridge,
where he spent most of his career and became professor 1952.
Hodgkin and Huxley managed for the first time to record electrical changes
across the cell membrane, and Hodgkin then built on these findings working
with Bernhard Katz, another cell physiologist. They proposed that during
the resting phase a nerve membrane allows only potassium ions to diffuse
into the cell, but when the cell is excited it allows sodium ions (which
are positively charged) to enter and potassium ions to move out. The
extrusion of sodium is probably dependent on the metabolic energy supplied
either directly or indirectly in the form of ATP(adenosine triphosphate).
The amount of sodium flowing in equals that of the potassium flowing
out.
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