Axelrod, Julius (1912–2004)

US neuropharmacologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work with the biophysicists Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler, on neurotransmitters (the chemical messengers of the brain).

Axelrod set out to discover why the messengers, once transmitted, should stop operating. Through his studies he found a number of specific enzymes that rapidly degraded the neurotransmitters. He also conducted research on the pineal gland, the endocrine gland that secretes melatonin in the brain, and its regulation of the sleep cycle.

Axelrod was born in New York City and studied at the College of the City of New York (BS, 1993), New York University (MA, 1941), and George Washington University (PhD, 1955). He was a laboratory assistant at the department of bacteriology, New York University Medical School (1933–35); chemist at the Laboratory of Industrial Hygiene (1935–46); research associate at the Goldwater Memorial Hospital (1946–49); associate and finally senior chemist at the National Heart Institute (1949–55); and then became head of pharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1955.