Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology Denis Noble CBE, FRS has been awarded the Top Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Lomonosov Gold Medal, for his work in physiology in developing a mathematical model of the electrical phenomena of the heart.
The Lomonosov Gold Medal, named after Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, is awarded each year since 1959 for outstanding achievements in the natural sciences and the humanities. Since 1967, two medals are awarded annually: one to a Russian and one to a foreign scientist.
DPAG's first Burdon Sanderson Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology Professor Noble developed the first mathematical model of cardiac cells in 1960 using his discovery of two of the main cardiac potassium ion channels. These discoveries were published in Nature (1960) and The Journal of Physiology (1962). The work was later developed to become the canonical models on which more than 100 cardiac cell models are based today. He also discovered the ionic mechanisms by which adrenaline increases heart rate.