Scientific Contributions of Andrew Huxley

This research will examine the principal scientific contributions of Andrew Fielding Huxley, who in 1963 shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hodgkin and Eccles. The research will set forth the scientific context in which the significance of Huxley's contributions to science should be explored and then discuss the specific features of Huxley's work that affected the theory and practice of medicine in the twentieth century.

In order to appreciate the importance of Huxley's scientific contribution research for the practice of medicine, it is necessary to explain the conceptual framework in which certain neural processes were long understood until Huxley's research transformed it. The generally accepted view of the transmission of neural impulses was the so-called membrane, or classical, theory, which held that nerve impulses reproduced continuously throughout the body by means of electrical currents passing back and forth into active and passive parts of the neuron, changing its status from one of resting to action potential. The key point about the membrane theory is that it was built around the behavior of the membrane tissue itself. The nerve impulse on that theory was considered self-sufficiently functional, passing back and forth across the membrane of the nerve fiber, which changed the character of its permeability during the pulsating motion, i.e., more or less breaking down and reconstituting with successive impulses.

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uxley contributed to the body of scientific knowledge was the insight that the concentration of sodium ions, which carried an electrical current, was greater during the action potential than during resting potential. That is, the relevant behavior was found to be coming from the structure of ions passing through the membranes, not the membranes. Connected to the insight about ionic behavior as a contribution to medical science was the method that Huxley devised to measure ionic concentrations during action potential and resting potential, respectively. Huxley created, or more exactly adapted from the work of colleagues, what he termed the voltage clamp, consisting of two silver-wire electrodes that were put through and along 30 mm of the interior of the axis (axon) of the squid nerve fiber. These electrodes were not meant to physically touch or cause friction with the interior cavity of the fiber; this appears to have been accomplished by the use of micropipettes, or hollow glass tubes, to encase the metal wire. One electrode controlled, or "clamped," the biopotential at a desired level, and the other electrode measured the current produced by impulses. The voltage clamp allowed experimenters to control the mV level and test t

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