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Joseph Erlanger 1874-1965

A native of San Francisco, physiologist Joseph Erlanger shared the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Herbert Spencer Gasser for discovering that nerve fibers within the same nerve cord can possess different functions. Erlanger and Gasser later developed a cathode ray oscilloscope that could analyze the electrical responses of a single nerve fiber.  Erlanger was the first professor of physiology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. He went on to serve from 1910 to 1946 as Professor of Physiology at the Medical School of Washington University in St. Louis. Erlanger collaborated on a 1937 textbook called Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity.