Hodgkin, Alan Lloyd (1914–1998)

English physiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963 with Andrew Huxley for their work on the ionic mechanisms involved in the communication or inhibition of impulses across neuron (nerve cell) membranes. They engaged in research on the mechanism of conduction in peripheral nerves 1945–60, and Hodgkin devised techniques for measuring electric currents flowing across a cell membrane. Hodgkin was knighted in 1972.

Hodgkin was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and educated at Cambridge, where he spent most of his career and became professor in 1952.

Hodgkin and Huxley managed for the first time to record electrical changes across the cell membrane, and Hodgkin then built on these findings working with Bernhard Katz, another cell physiologist. They proposed that during the resting phase a nerve membrane allows only potassium ions to diffuse into the cell, but when the cell is excited it allows sodium ions (which are positively charged) to enter and potassium ions to move out. The extrusion of sodium is probably dependent on the metabolic energy supplied either directly or indirectly in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). The amount of sodium flowing in equals that of the potassium flowing out.