Portrait of Herbert Spencer Gasser

Birthday profile

Herbert Spencer Gasser

Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1963)

Born
July 5, 1888
Died
May 11, 1963
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1888

About Herbert Spencer Gasser

Herbert Spencer Gasser was an American physiologist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for his work with action potentials in nerve fibers while on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, awarded jointly with Joseph Erlanger. After four years at that post, he was named the second director of the Rockefeller Institute, following the long tenure of Simon Flexner, who had founded the institute. As the United States became involved in World War I and the armies began using chemical warfare, Gasser was urged to contribute his knowledge of human physiology to the subject.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Herbert Spencer Gasser was born

Herbert Spencer Gasser was born in 1888. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineGreat Blizzard of 1888 paralyzes US East Coast
  • Technology milestoneKodak box camera — "You press the button, we do the rest"
  • Defining fadKodak camera craze
  • World population~1.48B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderGrover Cleveland
  • U.S. population57.6M

1888 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Herbert Spencer Gasser's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18882026
Population57.6M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.