June 14th
Born June 14, 1924; passed away on March 22, 2010 at the age of 85.
Sir James Whyte Black was a Scottish pharmacologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for his development of two important drugs, propranolol and cimetidine. Propranolol was the first clinically useful beta receptor blocker drug. This type of drug is now used in the treatment of coronary heart disease and hypertension. In 1972, Black characterized a new group of histamine receptors, the H2 receptors, and went on to develop the first clinically useful H2 receptor antagonist, cimetidine.
