Edgar Adrian

Edgar Douglas Adrian was born on 30 November 1889 in England and trained as an electrophysiologist at a time when the mechanics of the nervous system were still more theory than map. His experiments delivered the experimental proof for the all-or-none law: neurons don't whisper louder or softer, they either fire or they don't, each impulse identical to the last. That work, done alongside Sir Charles Sherrington's research on neuronal function, earned them the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physiology. Adrian later became the 1st Baron Adrian, a title that came long after the lab work that mattered. He died on 4 August 1977.