Nobel Prize Recipient. Ulf von Euler received international recognition after being awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Jointly, he shared this award with German-born British physician, Sir Bernard Katz, and American biochemist, Julius Axelrod. According to the Nobel Prize committee, these men received the coveted award "for their discoveries concerning the humoral transmitters in the nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation." In 1947 he discovered that the neurotransmitter norepinephrine played an important role in producing fight-or-flight signals. Subsequently, he showed that norepinephrine is formed and stored in packages, or vesicles, sent between neurons via synapses. Some years later, Katz and Axelrod extended this discovery. Born the second son, his father, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, received the 1928 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His mother, Astrid Cleve, received her Ph. D. in botany and became a full professor in 1955. His godfather was Svante Arrhenius, 1903 Nobel Prize for Chemistry recipient. With all this scientific exposure, he would, without a doubt enter a field of science. After finishing local schooling in Stockholm, he entered Karolinska Institute to study medicine in 1922, where he excelled in studying blood fevers. Turning to pharmacology, he presented his doctoral thesis in 1930, and was appointed as Assistant Professor in Pharmacology in the same year. From 1930 to 1931, he received a Rockefeller Scholarship to travel to England to do post-doctoral research with 1936 Nobel Prize recipients, Sir Henry Dale and Otto Loewi in England; 1938 Nobel Prize recipient, Corneille Heymans in Belgium; and on to Germany to study with other researchers. While at Dale's facility, he discovered an active biological factor in intestinal extracts. This find kept his interest in the research leading subsequently to the findings of prostaglandin and vesiglandin in 1935, piperidine in 1942, noradrenaline in 1946, and his Nobel Prize discovery in 1947. Becoming active in the Nobel Prize selection, he served as a Member of the Nobel Committee in Physiology or Medicine from 1953 to 1960. From 1961 to 1965 he served as Secretary of the Committee. In 1965 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Nobel Foundation. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was awarded the Gairdner Prize from Canada in 1961; the Jahre Prize from Norway in 1965; the Stouffer Prize from the United States in 1967; from Germany, the Carl Ludwig Medaille in 1953 and Schmiedeberg Plaquette in 1969; and La Madonnina from Italy 1970. He was a member of many European professional organizations along with being an honorary Member of The American College of Physicians and Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association. He held seven honorary degrees from universities from around the world. He married twice. With his first wife, he had a 27-year marriage and four children, who all had successful careers. His second wife was Swedish Countess Dagmar Cronstedt, who was known for her pro-German radio broadcasts during World War II. He died from complications of heart surgery. They are buried together.