Langley, John Newport

Born Sept. 25, 1852, in Newbury; died Nov. 5, 1925, in Cambridge. English physiologist and histologist. Fellow (1883) and vice-president (1904–05) of the Royal Society of London.

Langley graduated from Cambridge University. He became a professor there in 1903. His main works dealt with the anatomy and physiology of the autonomic nervous system, its general structure, its anatomical and functional characteristics, and the chemical specificity of its fibers. Having found that the fibers of the system pass through independent nerve ganglia, Langley proposed the name “autonomic.”