The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

February 5, 2013

February 5, 1914

Alan Hodgkin, (February 5, 1914 to December 20, 1998) shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles. In his memoirs 
Chance and Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War (1994), Hodgkin recalls a specimen collecting trip he made to Morocco in the early 1930s. Hodgkin mentions that their Arab guides tracked "this lynx-cat thing" and thinking they had  trapped it at the edge of a cliff, shot at it, and then said they got it. Apparently though it had crawled into a hole, because the young Cambridge student " saw the beast slinking away a little later. "

The Nobel was for his work in measuring aspects of electric activity on a cellular basis. His scientific career was rewarded with those lovely British honors also. And he was president of the Royal Society from 1970 to 1975.  An exemplary scientific life. 


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