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Herbert Spencer Gasser
(5 Jul 1888 - 11 May 1963)
American physiologist.
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Science Quotes by Herbert Spencer Gasser (1 quote)
We have seen that the cytoplasm of nerve has a fluid consistency. Hence its molecules are free to move. According to the thermodynamic principle known as the Gibbs-Thompson rule, any substance in the interior of a liquid which will reduce the free energy of the surface of the liquid, will be concentrated in the surface. The composition of the surface is, therefore, determined by the composition of the fluid from which it is formed; and as the rule is one having universal application, it must hold also for the cytoplasm of nerve. We must think of the surface membrane, then, as a structure which is in equilibrium with the interior of the axon, or at least as one which deviates from equilibrium only because, for dynamic reasons, equilibrium cannot be attained.
With Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965), American physiologist.
With Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965), American physiologist.
— Herbert Spencer Gasser
Joseph Erlanger and Herbert S. Gasser (eds.), Electrical Signs of Nervous Activity (1937), 136.
See also:
- 5 Jul - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Gasser's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
