Houssay, Bernardo Alberto

Houssay, Bernardo Alberto (bārnär`dō älbār`tō ou`sī), 1887–1971, Argentine physiologist, b. Buenos Aires. He was a child prodigy, entering college at the age of 9 and becoming a hospital intern at 13. With C. F. and G. T. Cori he was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the functions of the pituitary gland. He demonstrated that a hormone secreted by the pituitary prevented metabolism of sugar and that injections of pituitary extract induced symptoms of diabetes. He was a founder and director of the Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine in Buenos Aires. In 1949 he came to the United States as a special research fellow at the National Institute of Health.