Ten Nobels for the future

James W. Black was born in 1924 in Uddingston, Scotland. He graduated in Medicine in 1946 from the University of St. Andrews, where he then joined the Physiology Department. He subsequently moved to the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore in 1947 and then to the Physiology Department of the University of Glasgow Veterinary School, where he established a modern physiology laboratory.

Professor Black's first studies were concerned with gastric secretions and cardiovascular physiology, with the aim of identifying a drug able to nullify the effect of adrenalin on the heart, reducing that organ's demand for oxygen and thus ameliorate angina pectoris and attenuate the risk of sudden death due to ventricular fibrillation.

In 1958 in the ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) laboratories at Alderly Park (Cheshire), he started the research that would lead to the discovery of beta-blockers, effective in the treatment of asthma, hypertension and a number of cardiovascular pathologies.

He subsequently moved to the laboratories of Smith, Kline & French, where his studies of receptors which trigger gastric secretions led to the discovery of cimetidine, one of the most commonly-used ulcer treatments. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988.

In the early seventies, he was offered the Chair of Pharmacology at University College, London, where he organized courses in medicinal chemistry and continued his research in analyzing pharmacological activity at the tissue level. He then worked with the Wellcome Foundation until 1984, before moving to King's College, London, where he currently works.

In recent years he has been concerned with developing heuristic aspects of modelling and classifying drug action and with examining the rational basis for new drug research.

1993
Therapeutics:
progress and pitfalls

1999
Inventing New Drugs:
From Biological Questions
to Therapeutic Tools