Adrian, Edgar Douglas (1889–1977)

English physiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1932 for his work with Charles Sherrington in the field of nerve impulses and the function of the nerve cell. Adrian was also one of the first to study the electrical activity of the brain. He was made a baron in 1955.

Adrian was born in London and educated at Cambridge and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. From 1919 he held academic posts at Cambridge.

Between 1925 and 1933 he successfully recorded trains of nerve impulses travelling in single sensory or motor nerve fibres. He began to use thermionic valve amplifiers and found that in a single nerve fibre the electrical impulse does not change with the nature or strength of the stimulus. He also discovered that some sense organs, such as those concerned with touch, rapidly adapt to a steady stimulus whereas others, such as muscle spindles, adapt slowly or not at all.

Between 1933 and 1946 he worked on the ways in which the nervous system generates rhythmic electrical activity. He was one of the first scientists to use extensively the electroencephalogram (EEG). The last 20 years of his research life, 1937–59, were spent studying the sense of smell.

Adrian's works include The Mechanism of Nervous Action (1932) and The Physical Background of Perception (1947).