Dr. NO: The Discovery That Led to a Nobel Prize and Viagra

by Louis Ignarro PhD

Overview

In 1998, Dr. Louis J. Ignarro was awarded a rare and coveted Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking discovery of nitric oxide (NO) and its many critically important biological actions. But his work goes far beyond the development of Viagra. It has never been more urgently relevant to the world than it is today, as clinical trials are underway that involve using inhaled NO to treat patients suffering from COVID-19. Most Nobel laureate books have focused on the science. But in this fascinating and timely memoir, Dr. Ignarro opens up and shares intimate details about himself and his journey, his amazing accomplishments and heartbreaking setbacks, both in science and in life. This isn’t just a scientist’s story, it’s a quintessentially American story. Only in America could the child of uneducated Italian immigrants start out a struggling student barely able to speak English, and go on to win the Nobel Prize.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641120296
Publisher:	Nextone Inc
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	665,329
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

The son of Italian immigrants, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Louis J. Ignarro was educated at Columbia College, the University of Minnesota, and the National Institutes of Health. In addition to doing his groundbreaking research on the unique signaling molecule nitric oxide (NO), he has taught at Tulane Medical Center and the University of California Los Angeles. During his long, distinguished career, in addition to being a Nobel laureate, he has won many prestigious awards in the United States as well as abroad, including the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association, the Roussel Uclaf Prize in France, and honors from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as winning eleven consecutive Apple Teaching Awards that are voted on only by students. His biotech company has developed several popular nutritional supplements that continue to be sold through Herbalife, and he has a large, well-established personal fan base of 250,000+ highly engaged social media followers. As a highly sought-after speaker, he draws huge audiences sometimes exceeding 13,500.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Foreword David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition xiii

Prologue xvii

Part I The Early Years 1

"The only impossible journey is the one you never begin." Tony Robbins 1

Chapter 1 My Early Childhood and Fascination with Science 3

Chapter 2 My First Hands-on Experience with Science 13

Chapter 3 Drag Racing and Linus Pauling 37

Chapter 4 College Bound 55

Part II The Science 63

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." Thomas Jefferson

Chapter 5 Graduate School and Basic Research 65

Chapter 6 My Early Career in the Drug Industry 81

Chapter 7 My Burning Question 95

Part III A Nobel Discovery 115

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter 8 My Basic Research on Nitric Oxide 117

Chapter 9 Connecting the Dots 129

Chapter 10 The Discovery that Led to the Nobel Prize 145

Chapter 11 Confirmation 151

Chapter 12 Erectile Function and the "Father of Viagra" 175

Chapter 13 Sharon Elizabeth Williams 197

Part IV The Nobel Prize 217

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." Helen Keller

Chapter 14 Nobel Prize Announcement 219

Chapter 15 Celebration after Celebration 237

Chapter 16 Ceremony in Stockholm 251

Part V Post-Nobel and New Findings 275

"Logic will get you from point A to point B, but imagination will take you everywhere." Albert Einstein

Chapter 17 A Centennial to Remember 277

Chapter 18 Back in Los Angeles 293

Chapter 19 The Nobel Prize Changed My Life 303

Chapter 20 Full Circle 311

Epilogue 327

Acknowledgements 331

Editorial Reviews

"The discovery of Nitric Oxide by Lou Ignarro, and the role that it plays in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, is as important as the discovery of penicillin and insulin." —David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition

 

“Lou Ignarro’s transfixing, riveting, true story takes you through a Horatio Alger tale as the son of immigrant parents in Brooklyn to a Nobel Prize in Medicine in Stockholm. The story reveals an uncanny parallel between Lou’s life and that of Alfred Nobel himself, for whom the Prize is named – both experimenting with the chemistry of 'nitro' compounds – in the case of Nobel, harnessing these compounds as the explosive dynamite, and for Ignarro discovering nitroglycerin-like compounds’ function in the human body as vasodilators. The one difference – Lou doesn’t blow up his laboratory!” —Stuart Lipton, MD, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, California

 

“Lou Ignarro elegantly describes the uphill and circuitous path taken from building sand castles on the beach in New York to receiving the Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden.” —Sir Richard Roberts, PhD, biochemist and molecular biologist, New England Biolabs, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1993)

From the Publisher