History - The Nobel Prize

Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions.

Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system.

The prize, for physiology or medicine, went to Dr. Robert Furchgott, 82, of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Dr. Louis Ignarro, 57, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ferid Murad, 62, of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.