Julius Axelrod

Born to poor Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side and long working without a doctorate, Axelrod became a leading pharmacologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He uncovered how the body switches off nerve signals, showing that neurotransmitters such as noradrenaline are cleared from the synapse by being reabsorbed into nerve endings. This discovery of neurotransmitter reuptake illuminated how many psychiatric drugs work and earned him a share of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.