Peoples Archive is pleased to present the stories of the pharmacologist Sir James Black as the latest addition to our science section.
Sir James Whyte Black was born on the 14th July 1924 in Scotland. He studied at Beath High School, Cowdenbeath, Fife before going on to study medicine at the University of St Andrews on the Patrick Hamilton Residential Scholarship.
In 1972 he was offered the Chair of Pharmacology at the University of London but after four years he began to miss the excitement of chemical collaboration and when he received an invitation to join the Wellcome Foundation he was happy to accept it. Here, with the support of Kings College, London, he had the opportunity to set up a small academic research laboratory.
Sir James is most well known for the development of two major families of drugs; beta blockers and anti-ulcer histamine receptor blockers. Beta blockers are an adrenaline receptor-blocking drugs used mainly for the treatment of patients with heart disease and are considered one of the most important contributions to 20th century pharmacology.
In 1988 Sir James received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine along with Gertrude Elion and George Hichings for for their discoveries of "important principles for drug treatment".
