The Functioning of the Giant Nerve Fibres of the Squid. 1938 - J.Z. and the discovery of squid giant nerve fibres.

J.Z., to give him the title by which he was universally known, initially acquired an interest in cephalopods when working in Naples with Enrico Sereni in 1932 on the axons in the mantle connectives and stellar nerves of octopus. This led him to further studies at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory of some structures in the mantles of squid that he tentatively identified as giant nerve fibres (Young, 1936). In the summer of 1936 he visited Woods Hole in Massachusetts, determined to prove that these ‘curious structures’ were in fact motor axons. With F. O. Schmitt and R. Bear, he successfully examined the axoplasm of axons from the mantle of the squid Loligo pealii with polarized light, but failed in attempts with Ralph Gerard, Detlev Bronk and Keffer Hartline to make any oscilloscope recordings of action potentials from single fibres. However, he and Hartline did better one day when they found that application of a solution of sodium citrate to one end of the supposed axons generated a rhythmic discharge at the other, showing that they were indeed nerve fibres. He then made a careful study of the anatomy of the mantles, and in his classical paper on ‘The functioning of the giant nerve fibres of the squid’ (Young, 1938), he showed that the third order giant axons served to bring about the precisely coordinated contraction of the mantle causing expulsion of a powerful jet of JJEE BB CC llaa ssss iicc ss JEB Classics is an occasional column, featuring historic publications from The Journal of Experimental Biology. These articles, written by modern experts in the field, discuss each classic paper’s impact on the field of biology and their own work. A PDF of the original paper accompanies each article, and can be found on the journal’s website as supplemental data. water propelling the animals rapidly backwards or forwards according to the position of the funnel, sometimes accompanied by a slug of ‘ink’ to assist the animal’s escape.