Robert Furchgott, 92, an American scientist who shared a Nobel prize for helping discover how a gas molecule regulates some of the most important functions of the body, died May 19 at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. No cause of death was reported.
Furchgott and his co-winners of the 1998 Nobel for physiology or medicine, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad, were credited with showing skeptical scientific colleagues that something as seemingly unstable as a gas can send important signals to vital organs.
The discovery of nitric oxide’s role in regulating the contraction and expansion of blood vessels suggested new therapies for such conditions as high blood pressure and heart disease. It also has been linked to the development of Viagra, the anti-impotence medication.
A key step in what has been called the nitric oxide revolution was Furchgott’s recognition that a natural substance produced by the interior lining of blood vessels makes them dilate.
“This was a marvelously simple and creative story” of a senior scientist at work in his laboratory, a specialist said at the time the Nobel was announced.
On display in the library of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, where Furchgott worked, is a historic handwritten note he made on the subject while on an airplane.
According to Robert Wong, chairman of the department, the note, made in 1986, records for the first time Furchgott’s hypothesis that the substance might be nitric oxide.
Robert Francis Furchgott was born in Charleston, S.C., on June 4, 1916, and from childhood developed an interest in what he called “natural history,” based on field trips a local museum sponsored to nearby beaches, marshes and woods. He described himself as “an avid shell collector and bird-watcher.”
Furchgott held a chemistry degree from the University of North Carolina and received a doctorate in biochemistry from Northwestern University in 1940.
His two wives died. Survivors include three daughters, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
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