Louis Joseph Ignarro

View more Science videos

American pharmacologist (1941–)

Ignarro, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, graduated with a BA in pharmacy from Columbia University in 1962 and four years later gained his PhD in pharmacology at the University of Minnesota. From 1979 to 1985 he worked in the department of pharmacology at Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans. Since 1985 he has been at the UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Robert Furchgott and Ferid Murad for their discovery that molecules of the gas nitrogen monoxide (nitric oxide, NO) can transmit signals in the cardiovascular system. The hitherto unknown substance endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF) had been discovered by Furchgott in 1980. Ignarro made a series of brilliant analyses to determine the chemical nature of EDRF and in 1986 concluded, independently of and together with Furchgott, that the mystery substance was indeed nitrogen monoxide.

Ignarro, Louis Joseph, 1941-. American pharmacologist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Univ. of Minnesota, 1966. He was on the faculty at Tulane Univ. from 1979 to 1985, when he became a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. Ignarro was a co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Robert F. Furchgott and Ferid Murad for discovering that nitric oxide is a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. Following Furchgott's discovery of a substance of unknown nature that relaxes the blood vessels, known at the time as endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF), Ignarro performed a series of analyses that showed that EDRF was nitric oxide. It is now known that this common air pollutant has the ability to protect the heart, stimulate the brain, and kill bacteria. The work of the three later led to the development of sildenafil citrate (Viagra), an anti-impotence drug.