Bovet

Bovet, Daniels (1907-1992) Swiss Physiologist Daniel Bovet was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on March 23, 1907, to Pierre Bovet, professor of peda­gogy at the University of Geneva, and Amy Babut. He graduated from the University of Geneva in 1927 and then worked on a doctorate in zoology and compara­tive anatomy, which he received in 1929.

During the years 1929 until 1947 he worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, starting as an assistant and later as chief of the institute’s Laboratory of Therapeu­tic Chemistry. Here he discovered the first synthetic antihistamine, pyrilamine (meplyramine). In 1947 he went to Rome to organize a laboratory of therapeutic chemistry and became an Italian citizen. He became the laboratory’s chief at the Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome. Seeking a substitute for curare, a muscle relax­ant, for anesthesia, he discovered gallamine (trade

name Flaxedil), a neuromuscular blocking agent used today as a muscle relaxant in the administration of anesthesia.

He and his wife Filomena Nitti published two important books, Structure chimique et activite phar- macodynamique des medicaments du systeme nerveux vegetatif (The chemical structure and pharmacody­namic activity of drugs of the vegetative nervous sys­tem) in 1948 and, with G. B. Marini-Bettolo, Curare and Curare-like Agents (1959). In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his discovery relating to synthetic compounds for the blocking of the effects of certain substances occur­ring in the body, especially in its blood vessels and skeletal muscles.

Bovet published more than 300 papers and received numerous awards. He served as the head of the psychobiology and psychopharmacology laboratory of the National Research Council (Rome) from 1969 until 1971, when he became professor of psychobiolo­gy at the University of Rome (1971-82). He died on April 8, 1992, in Rome.