May 21st
Born 21 May 1934.
Swedish biochemist, corecipient with fellow Swede Sune K. Bergström and Englishman John Robert Vane of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The three scientists were honoured for their isolation, identification, and analysis of numerous prostaglandins, a family of natural compounds that influence blood pressure, body temperature, allergic reactions, and other physiological phenomena in mammals. Samuelsson was credited as the leading scientist in the biochemistry of prostaglandins since 1965 and for the current knowledge of the prostaglandin tree with all its branches. Samuelsson and his associates had also clarified the biochemical processes by which the various prostaglandins are formed and metabolized.
