author
Walter Holbrook Gaskell
1847–1914
Remembered as a pioneering British physiologist, he helped lay the groundwork for modern understanding of how the heart beats and how the autonomic nervous system regulates the body. His experiments made him an important figure in late 19th-century physiology.
1 Audiobook
The Origin of Vertebrates
by Walter Holbrook Gaskell
About the author
Born in Naples on November 1, 1847, Walter Holbrook Gaskell was educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a British physiologist whose research focused on the heart, nerves, and the body’s involuntary control systems.
Gaskell is especially known for experimental work that shaped later understanding of cardiac muscle and the autonomic nervous system. Accounts of his career consistently describe his investigations into the heartbeat and nerve supply of the heart as central to his scientific reputation.
He died near Cambridge on September 7, 1914. Today he is remembered as one of the key physiologists of his era, with work that continued to influence both medicine and physiology long after his lifetime.