[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S12573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DR. ROBERT F. FURCHGOTT

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today I rise to congratulate Dr. 
Robert F. Furchgott of the State University of New York Health Science 
Center at Brooklyn on winning the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or 
Medicine.
  Dr. Furchgott, along with Dr. Louis J. Ignarro of the University of 
California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad of the University of 
Texas, were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discoveries of how 
natural production of nitric oxide can mediate a wide variety of bodily 
actions. Those include the regulation of blood pressure, widening blood 
vessels, preventing the formation of blood clots, fighting infections, 
reducing sexual dysfunction, and functioning as a signal molecule in 
the nervous system.
  The bestowment of this prestigious honor to Dr. Furchgott brings long 
overdue recognition to the medical research conducted at ``SUNY 
Downstate''. I commend Dr. Furchgott and the entire staff of the State 
University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn for their many 
contributions to the field of medicine.
  Mr. President, I ask that the article on Dr. Robert F. Furchgott from 
the New York Times be printed in the Record.
  The article follows.

                Research Honor Goes to the Brooklyn Side

                        (By Jennifer Steinhauer)

       The State University of New York Health Science Center at 
     Brooklyn has always been a bit of an underdog among the 
     city's medically elite institutions. In spite of its 
     groundbreaking work in the study of AIDS, alcoholism and 
     other illnesses, kudos most often went to hospitals and 
     research centers on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, 
     like Mount Sinai and New York University.
       But yesterday, SUNY Downstate, as the science center is 
     known, earned its boasting rights over Manhattan when Dr. 
     Robert F. Furchgott, a distinguished professor of 
     pharmacology there, received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or 
     Medicine, the highest recognition possible for a body of work 
     that most Americans would recognize only in the form of 
     Viagra.
       Dr. Furchgott, 82, is in many ways a quintessential 
     representative of Downstate, which had never received that 
     Nobel Prize and is better known to most New Yorkers as the 
     college that provides doctors to Kings County Hospital 
     Center, one of the city's busiest and perhaps most embattled 
     hospitals.
       Colleagues described Dr. Furchgott as modest, spending 
     nearly every day nibbling sandwiches and eating yogurt in his 
     office while poring over scientific journals, or toiling in 
     his laboratory, pondering the mysteries of nitric, pondering 
     the mysteries of nitric oxide.
       ``His personal modesty stands in marked contrast to his 
     magnificent achievement,'' said Dr. Eugene B. Feigelson, the 
     college's dean of medicine. ``It is a source of pride for the 
     entire institution and to Brooklyn and is a further 
     distinction for us and for the State University of New 
     York.''
       When asked to reflect on his honor, Dr. Furchgott seemed 
     almost dismissive. ``I was kind of surprised,'' he said in a 
     telephone interview from his home in Hewlett, N.Y. ``My work 
     is sort of old-fashioned pharmacology.
       ``Is it the highlight of my career? I guess in a way, 
     though you don't do research to win prizes. You do it because 
     you're curious about what makes things tick.''
       Sure, international attention, television cameras planted 
     on the front lawn, phone ringing off the hook with calls from 
     reporters struggling mightily to understand the subtleties of 
     his work--these things have tickled him.
       But his favorite moment in his entire career, he said, 
     ``was when we discovered that endothelial cells were 
     necessary for relaxation of arteries.''
       ``Then,'' he said, ``it was finding that the endothelium-
     derived relaxing factor was nitric oxide. There have been 
     lots of fun things.''
       He is, by admission of his admirers, a serious man of 
     research.
       ``His lectures were dull, onerous and droning on,'' said 
     Eli A. Friedman, a distinguished teaching professor of 
     medicine at SUNY Downstate and a former student of Dr. 
     Furchgott. ``But the content of his work was profound and 
     inspiring. So if one could get past the fact that he was less 
     than electric competition for Jackie Gleason on television, 
     he was very exciting and moving.''
       Dr. Furchgott, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry and is 
     a professor emeritus at Downstate, won his prize for 
     discoveries of new properties of nitric oxide. With 
     colleagues, he was able to demonstrate that the gas nitric 
     oxide can act as a messenger molecule that tells blood 
     vessels to relax and dilate, which lowers blood pressure. The 
     discovery was vital to developing the anti-impotence drug 
     Viagra.
       In 1996, he won an Albert Lasker Award in basic medical 
     research, which is often a precursor award to the Nobel 
     Prize. ``Everyone here will walk a little straighter and hold 
     their head a little higher because he is here.'' Dr. Friedman 
     said.
       Dr. Furchgott was born in Charleston, S.C., and received a 
     B.S. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina in 
     1937 and a doctorate in biochemistry from Northwestern 
     University in 1940.
       When asked what else he would like known about his career, 
     Dr. Furchgott said: ``Nothing really. I would like to get 
     myself some lunch now.''

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