How Did Otto Loewi Contribute To Chemistry

Discovery Otto Loewi was born on June 3, 1873 in Frankfurt, Germany to Anna Willstaedter and Jakob Loewi, a wine merchant in that city. Throughout his life, he lived a very happy childhood and had good memories of his schooldays. From 1881 to 1890, he attended a Gymnasium, which focused on the studies of classical languages. There he studied Latin for the whole nine years then Greek for the six later years. Interestingly, Loewi would often receive “good marks” on the literary subjects, but “poor marks” on mathematics and physics. He even found out that he had an unusual wide range of knowledge and interest in the field of natural sciences. Through that, it influenced the environment he puts himself in both school and his personal life.

The next few years, a few scientist has suggested substances that might be released, but experiments were difficult to plan out. Eventually, one day when he went to sleep he thought of an idea for the experiment and wrote it down on his notes, but the morning he could not understand what it was about. Then the following night he woke up with the same idea and rushed to the laboratory and performed the experiment. Later that day, one form of chemical transmission of the nerve impulses were proven. Lowie found that there was an impulse in the vagus that slows the heart. If he were to cut the vagus, the impulses would cease and the heart rate increases. In 1921, he formulated an imaginative experiment to test his theory by using frogs. Lowie isolated both of the frog's heart and into one of the heart he instituted a Ringer’s solution, a nutrient fluid and simulated the vagus. The results were that the heart rate immediately slowed down, so transfer the solution the second heart and the results were the same. Since there was no simulation in the vagus in the second heart, the inhibition was probably from the substance being transferred from the first one. He then repeated the experiment, but this time he simulated the nerve into the heart and the rate accelerated. Later in 1921, even though he did not know at that time what the substance was acetylcholine, he still presented his experiment to the German Pharmacological Society. Then British researcher, Henry Dale suspected that his substance could be acetylcholine, so did he experiment in the human body to prove it. Consequently, Dale was right and he shared the Nobel Prize in medicine with Loewi for their findings in