ID 381367
Lot 159 | Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (1914-1998)
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
Nobel prize winner Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin’s own collection of his contributions published over the entire course of his career. The English physiologist and biophysicist is chiefly remember as the co-recipient of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles, for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane. A student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Hodgkin began with a passion for the natural sciences and was encouraged to pursue mathematics and physics. ‘At that period the high table of Trinity included an astonishing array of scientific talent, and Hodgkin found it inspiring if sometimes daunting to meet people like J.J. Thomson, Rutherford, Aston, Eddington, Hopkins, G.H. Hardy and Adrian. In the Physiological Laboratory he learnt about cable-theory from Rushton and about amplifiers from Matthews, Grey Walter and Rawdon-Smith. A.V. Hill, who refereed his fellowship thesis, had lent a copy to Gasser and this resulted in an invitation to work in the latter's laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. During that period (1937-1938) Hodgkin spent several weeks with K.S. Cole at Woods Hole and there he learnt how to dissect squid axons. He returned to Cambridge in 1938 and in the following year started a collaboration with A.F. Huxley, whom he had the good fortune to teach. During the first few months of the war Hodgkin worked on aviation medicine with Matthews at Farnborough and from February 1940 to July 1945 in various parts of England on airborne radar ... After the war Hodgkin returned to Cambridge where he held a teaching post in the Physiology Laboratory; A.F. Huxley returned a few months later and they continued the collaboration which started before the war. R.D. Keynes joined them a year later and there was soon a small group interested in ionic mechanisms in living cells. Lord Adrian greatly assisted the progress, partly by lightening the teaching load and partly by arranging with the Rockefeller Foundation for a generous grant to support the work; later help was received from other bodies, particularly the Nuffield Foundation and the Royal Society ... Hodgkin was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1948 and in 1951 became a Foulerton Research Professor of the Royal Society’ (Nobel biography).
8 volumes collecting total of 316 offprints, quarto (approx. 290 x 220mm); four of the volumes with typescript indexes bound at head (occasional toning and mild creases). Blue or black cloth, spines lettered in gilt (discoloration to some of the spines); and 2 monographic volumes: octavo (212 x 140mm), original cloth, upper side and spine lettered in gilt; octavo (250 x 168mm), with Hodgkin’s autobiographical entry and photographic portrait, in the original cloth (occasional light wear to extremities). Provenance: Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (his typescript indexes to four of the volumes and the stamp of his department, Physiological Library, Cambridge, to front paste-downs).
Address of auction |
CHRISTIE'S 8 King Street, St. James's SW1Y 6QT London United Kingdom | |
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