Chapter 1 - Prologue: Signal Transduction from an Historical Perspective

Abstract

An historical account of how the term “signal transduction” entered biomedical research and how stimulus-response coupling, hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors, and their receptors were brought to light. It pays tribute to the wisdom of our forebears, whose freedom of thought and sometimes serendipitous discoveries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the creation of the modern sciences. Personalities highlighted are, in order of appearance, Alfred Gilman, Martin Rodbell, Thomas Henry Huxley, Steve Grand, Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard, Henry Hallett Dale, Otto Loewi, George Oliver, Edward Sharpey-Schäfer, Ernest Henry Starling, William Maddock Bayliss, Paul Ehrlich, John Newport Langley, Francis Peyton Rous, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Stanley Cohen, Alexis Carrel, and the robot CONRO whose control of functionalities is based on the principles of hormone action.