History
Vanderbilt faculty have won two Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine. In 1971 Earl Sutherland, Jr., received the prize for his discovery of Cyclic AMP. Stanley Cohen received a Nobel in 1986, as he shared the award with Rita Levi-Montalcini of Italy for their discovery of epidermal growth factor, a hormone that can speed up certain biological processes.
Some other important research firsts from Vanderbilt's history:
- In 1933, Alfred Blalock and his research assistant Vivien Thomas conducted pioneering research leading to the first cardiothoracic surgery for infants born with "blue baby syndrome". Blalock's work was essential to the development of open heart surgery.
- In the early 1940s, Ernest Goodpasture developed the method of culturing vaccines in chick embryos, which allowed the mass production of vaccines to prevent viral diseases worldwide.
- In the 1950s, Amos U. Christie, chair of pediatrics, led a team that achieved worldwide notice for pioneering work in histoplasmosis.
Read more about this topic: Vanderbilt University Medical Center
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“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)