100th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1973 - 4 Shilling

Otto Loewi was born on 3 June 1873 in Frankfurt am Main. After graduation, he studied medicine and came in 1905 to the University of Vienna. Here he met his future wife, Guida Goldschmidt, whom he married in 1908 and with whom he had four children. The following year, Loewi was appointed to the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Graz. His inaugural lecture "Clinic and Pharmacology" took a lot of preconditions, which only led to an actual solution in the last decade. In all his research since his dissertation, he investigated the mechanism involved in the transmission of a nerve impulse to an organ. This work, carried out in a classic-simple test arrangement on isolated frog heart, represent his most significant findings, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1936 together with Sir Heny H. Dale. Two years later, 65-year-old Loewi was arrested as a Jew. Only by giving away all his property, including the Nobel Prize, could he leave the country. He spent two years in exile in England before he went to New York University. His interest and fidelity to research helped him survive the initial years of bitter hardship in America. Loewi died highly esteemed on December 25, 1961 in New York.