Joseph Erlanger

Joseph Erlanger (born Jan. 5, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—died Dec. 5, 1965, St. Louis, Mo.) was an American physiologist, who received (with Herbert Gasser) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for discovering that fibres within the same nerve cord possess different functions. Erlanger’s research into nerve function was the product of a profitable collaboration with Gasser, one of his students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1906–10). Soon after Erlanger’s appointment...