Alan Hodgkin was distinguished for his contributions to the understanding of nerve conduction, the excitation of muscle, and phototransduction in the retina. With his colleagues Bernard Katz and Andrew Huxley, he established the ionic basis of the action potential, revolutionising neuroscience and laying the foundations for subsequent work on ion channels. In 1963, at the age of 49, he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 40, and held its Foulerton Research Chair from 1952 to 1969. In 1970 he succeeded F J W Roughton to the John Humphrey Plummer Chair of Biophysics in the University of Cambridge. He was President of the Royal Society from 1970 to 1975, its Croonian Lecturer in 1957, and winner of its Royal Medal in 1958 and its Copley Medal in 1965. He was Master of Trinity College from 1978 to 1984, President of the Marine Biological Association from 1966 to 1976, and Chancellor of the University of Leicester from 1971 to 1984. He served on the Committee of The Physiological Society from 1949 to 1953 and again as Foreign Secretary from 1961 to 1967. He gave the Annual Review Lecture in the Society’s Centenary year (1976) and became an Honorary Member in 1979. He was made KBE in 1972, and a Member of the Order of Merit in 1973.

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