1. Sir John Robert Vane was a British pharmacologist who was instrumental in the understanding of how aspirin produces pain-relief and anti-inflammatory effects and his work led to new treatments for heart and blood vessel disease and introduction of ACE inhibitors.
John Vane was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 along with Sune Bergstrom and Bengt Samuelsson for "their discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related biologically active substances".
John Vane attended a local state school from age 5, before moving on to King Edward's School in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
When Maurice Stacey, the Professor of Chemistry at Birmingham, was asked by Harold Burn to recommend a student to go to Oxford and study pharmacology, John Vane jumped at the chance and moved to Burn's department in 1946.
John Vane held a post at the University of London for 18 years, progressing from senior lecturer to Professor of Experimental Pharmacology in 1966.
In 1973, John Vane left his academic post at the Royal College of Surgeons and took up the position as Director of Research at the Wellcome Foundation, taking a number of his colleagues with him who went on to form the Prostaglandin Research department.
At the William Harvey Research Institute, John Vane's work focused on selective inhibitors of COX-2, and the interplay between nitric oxide and endothelin in the regulation of vascular function.
John Vane was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.
John Vane was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Jagiellonian University Medical College in 1977, Paris Descartes University in 1978, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1980, the University of Aberdeen in 1983 and Fu Jen Catholic University in 2011.
John Vane was awarded the Lasker Award in 1977 for the discovery of prostacyclin and was knighted in 1984 for his contributions to science.
In 2000, John Vane received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
John Vane married, in 1948, Daphne Page and had 2 daughters.
John Vane died on 19 November 2004 in Princess Royal University Hospital, Kent, from long-term complications arising from leg and hip fractures he sustained in May of that year.