Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 2002

Ci tation Prof. Ferid Mu r ad A s is w e l l k n own, it was the nineteenth-century Swedish scientist A l f r ed No b el w h o invented d y nam i te and w h o bequeathed the f u nd for the annual Nobel Prizes. What may be less w e l l k n o wn is that the chief active ingredient of dynamite, nitroglycerin, has also been used for over a hundred years i n the treatment of angina pain. When Nobel himself was taken ill w i t h heart disease, he f o u nd it ‘ironic' that his doctor prescribed nitroglycerin. It is doubly ironic, in fact, because it was a recent Nobel Prize laureate for Medicine w h o first discovered the reason w h y n i t r og l y c e r in is effective in the relief of angina pain. The researcher was Prof. Ferid Mu r a d, and the discovery was the action of nitric oxide, wh i ch relaxes smooth muscle cells. The discovery of the action of ‘nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system', wh i ch Prof. Mu r ad shared w i t h t wo other scientists, has been both surprising and profound i n its implications. It is surprising partly because nitric oxide is totally different f r om any other k n own signal molecule and partly because it is such a simple and c ommon c omp o u n d, w h i c h is f o rmed whenever nitrogen burns, as i n a motor car engine, for example. The discovery is extremely i mp o r t a nt because it has implications in so many areas of medicine, such as the treatment of heart disease, bacterial infections, h i gh blood pressure in the lungs of infants, cancer and, last but by no means least, erectile dysfunction in men. A t first glance Prof. Murad's background does not seem very promising soil to produce a Nobel Prize winner. His father came f r om a family of shepherds in Albania and had less than a year's f o rmal schooling, t h o u gh he could speak seven languages. He emigrated to the Un i t ed States i n 1913, where he met his wife, w h o had only primary school education. Prof. Mu r ad believes that the childhood poverty and the m i n i mal education of his parents had a beneficial influence on h i m and his brothers, one of w h o m became a dentist, the other a professor of anthropology. Another powerful influence on Prof. Mu r ad was his parents' restaurant business i n Wh i t i n g, Indiana. F r om an early age he The University's 58th Congregation 4 1