John Newport LangleyFRS (2 November 1852 – 5 November 1925) was a British physiologist, who made substantive discoveries about the nervous system and secretion.
Life
He was born in Newbury, Berkshire the son of John Langley, the local schoolmaster, and his wife, Mary Groom. He was educated at Exeter Grammar School in Devon. In 1871 he won a place at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA before continuing multiple postgraduate studies, gaining several doctorates.
He spent his entire career at Cambridge University, beginning as a Demonstrator in lectures in 1875. He began lecturing in Physiology in 1884 and was awarded a professorship in 1903, succeeding Prof Michael Foster.[1]
Langley is known as one of the fathers of the chemical receptor theory, and as the origin of the concept of "receptive substance".[3][4]
In 1901, he advanced research in neurotransmitters and chemical receptors, working with extracts from adrenal glands. These extracts elicited responses in tissues that were similar to those induced by nerve stimulation.[5]
A brass plaque to Langley's memory exists in Trinity College Chapel at Cambridge University.[8]
Family
Langley married at St. Mary′s church, Montrose, on 10 September 1902 Vera Kathleen Forsythe-Grant (d.1932), third daughter of Frederick Grant Forsyth-Grant, of Ecclesgreig, Kincardineshire.[9]
^Rubin, Ronald P. (December 2007). "A Brief History of Great Discoveries in Pharmacology: In Celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Founding of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics". Pharmacological Reviews. 59 (4): 289–359. doi:10.1124/pr.107.70102. PMID18160700. S2CID33152970.
^The Autonomic Nervous System. Cambridge : W. Heffer & Sons, Ltd. 1921. p. 6.
