Jonathan Goodchild
Senior Production Editor, The Journal of Physiology

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.88.16a

12-13 July 2012, Cambridge, UK

It is 60 years since Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley published in The Journal of Physiology their classic papers giving the mechanism of the nerve impulse. To celebrate and review progress in the field, a two-day symposium was held on 12–13 July at Trinity College, Cambridge (where they were students, fellows and, successively, the Master), organized by Simon O’Connor along with James Bower (University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio), Michael Häusser (University College London) and Idan Segev (Hebrew University, Jerusalem).

The Physiological Society and The Journal of Physiology, among others, provided sponsorship, and The Journal put on a display featuring the first volume of 1878 along with volumes open at the papers of the Cambridge Nobel Prize winners, Hopkins (1912), Adrian (1926) and of course Hodgkin & Huxley (1952), accompanied by photographs of their homes and timelines of their lives.

On the first day, the symposium delegates joined family members for the unveiling of a plaque to Adrian, Hodgkin and Huxley on the wall of the physiology building where they worked, followed by a historical lecture by Bertil Hille (University of Washington at Seattle). In the evening, the symposium dinner was held at Trinity College, with an after-dinner speech by Ian Glynn, Emeritus Professor of Physiology and Fellow of the college.