US: Nobel winner Robert F Furchgott dies at 92

31 May 2009

Robert F Furchgott, one of three American scientists awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body, died on 19 May in Seattle, reports Henny Ray Abrams for AFP. He was 92.

Furchgott, formerly of the State University of New York in Brooklyn, shared the $995,500 prize with Louis J Ignarro of the University of California at Los Angeles and Dr Ferid Murad of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. Their discovery led to several breakthroughs, including a new treatment for newborns with dangerously high blood pressure in their lungs and drugs for the treatment of shock.

In his research, Furchgott examined the effects of such naturally occurring chemicals as acetylcholine on blood vessels and, in 1980, concluded that they stimulated the release of a signalling molecule that caused muscles of the blood vessels to relax.
Full report on the Los Angeles Times site

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