Fife-born James Black cuts his research teeth at the Glasgow Veterinary School physiology laboratory in the 1950s.
Other teams are looking at increasing the supply of oxygen to patients with narrowed arteries. Black’s genius is to look at it from the other end – how to restrict the heart’s demand for oxygen through the adrenaline hormone.
This leads to the beta blocker. He later applies the same principles to block acid secretion in the stomach by histamine. Management of stomach ulcers and heart disease was changed forever.
Black’s career included research with ICI, Wellcome, and Smith Kline and at King’s and University colleges in London.
None of this would have been possible without his early Scottish schooling which he described as “arguably the best anywhere” and a scholarship which enabled him to follow his brother to study medicine at St Andrews.