Ragnar Granit

For more information on Ragnar Arthur Granit, visit Britannica.com.

Finnish neurophysiologist (1900–1991)

Born in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, Granit qualified as a physician from the university there in 1927. He taught at the university from 1927 until 1940, serving as professor of physiology from 1935. In 1940 he moved to the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, becoming professor of neurophysiology at the newly founded Medical Nobel Institute in 1946.

In a long career Granit has been a prolific writer on all aspects of the neurophysiology of vision. He demonstrated that light not only stimulates but can also inhibit impulses along the optic nerve. By attaching microelectrodes to individual cells in the retina he showed that color vision does not simply depend on three different types of receptor (cone) cells sensitive to different parts of the spectrum. Rather, some of the eye's nerve fibers are sensitive to the whole spectrum while others respond to a much narrower band and so are color specific.

Granit described his work in Sensory Mechanisms of the Retina (1947) and The Visual Pathway (1962); for such research he shared the 1967 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with George Wald and Haldan Hartline. Granit also did important work on the control of muscle spindles by the gamma fibers.

Finnish-born Swedish physiologist. He shared a 1967 Nobel Prize for research on the human eye.

Ragnar Arthur Granit
Born	October 30, 1900 Vantaa, Finland
Died	March 12, 1991 (aged 90) Stockholm, Sweden
Residence	Finland, Sweden
Citizenship	Finnish (1900-1991) Swedish (1940-1991)
Fields	Physiology
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1967)

Ragnar Arthur Granit (October 30, 1900, Vantaa, Finland – March 12, 1991, Stockholm, Sweden) was a Finnish/Swedish scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 along with Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald.

Granit graduated in 1927 from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Helsinki, Finland. When Finland became the target of a massive Soviet attack in 1940 during the Winter War (1939 - 1940), Granit sought refuge - and peaceful surroundings for his studies and research work - in the neighbouring capital of Sweden, Stockholm, at the age of 40.

In the same year, 1940, Granit also received Swedish citizenship, which made it possible for him to go on with his work and live without having to worry about the war, which lasted until 1945 in Finland. Granit kept his Finnish citizenship as well, and he remained a patriotic Finn throughout his life. After the Finnish-Russian Wars, Granit kept homes both in Finland and Sweden.

Granit was professor of neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1946 to his retirement in 1967.

Granit said that his Nobel prize "belongs fifty-fifty to Finland and Sweden".

References

• Kernell, D (December 2000). "Ragnar Granit 100 years--memories and reflections". Journal of the history of the neurosciences 9 (3): 280–5. doi:10.1076/jhin.9.3.280.1791. PMID 11232369. 
• Noguera Palau JJ (April 2000). "[Ragnar Granit. Helsinki (1900-1991)]". Archivos de la Sociedad Española de Oftalmología 75 (4): 293–4. PMID 11151162. 
• Raju, T N (August 1999). "The Nobel Chronicles. 1967: George Wald (1906-97); Ragnar A Granit (1900-91); and Haldan Keffer Hartline (1903-83)". Lancet 354 (9178): 605. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)77968-X. PMID 10470741. 
• Shampo, M A; Kyle R A (November 1998). "Ragnar Granit--Nobel Laureate in Medicine". Mayo Clin. Proc. 73 (11): 1082. PMID 9818044. 
• Grillner, S (. 1995). "Ragnar Granit - 30 October 1900--11 March 1991". Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Royal Society. Royal Society (Great Britain) 41: 183–97. PMID 11615354. 
• Bouman, H D (February 1968). "Ragnar Granit, M.D., Ph.D". American journal of physical medicine 47 (1): 1. PMID 4868641. 
• Dolwing, J E; Ratliff F (October 1967). "Nobel prize: 3 named for medicine, physiology award (George Wald, Ragnar Granit and Haldan Keffer Hartline)". Science 158 (800): 468–73. doi:10.1126/science.158.3800.468. PMID 4860394. 

External links

• Ragnar Granit Foundation
• Ragnar Granit Institute
• Biography of Ragnar Granit at the Nobel Foundation site

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine Max Theiler (1951) · Selman Waksman (1952) · Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann (1953) · John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins (1954) · Hugo Theorell (1955) · André Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards (1956) · Daniel Bovet (1957) · George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg (1958) · Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg (1959) · Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar (1960) · Georg von Békésy (1961) · Francis Crick / James D. Watson / Maurice Wilkins (1962) · John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley (1963) · Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen (1964) · François Jacob / André Lwoff / Jacques Monod (1965) · Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins (1966) · Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald (1967) · Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg (1968) · Max Delbrück / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria (1969) · Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod (1970) · Earl Sutherland, Jr. (1971) · Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter (1972) · Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen (1973) · Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade (1974) · David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin (1975) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

Persondata
NAME	Granit, Ragnar Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Finnish scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 30, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH	Helsinki, Finland
DATE OF DEATH	March 12, 1991
PLACE OF DEATH	Stockholm, Sweden

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