Daniel Bovet, (born March 23, 1907, Neuchâtel, Switz.—died April 8, 1992, Rome, Italy), Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries of certain chemotherapeutic agents—namely, sulfa drugs, antihistamines, and muscle relaxants.
Bovet studied at the University of Geneva, graduating with a doctorate in science in 1929. That same year, he went on to the Pasteur Institute in Paris and became head of the therapeutic chemistry laboratory there in 1939. In 1937 Bovet discovered the first antihistamine substance, which (in counteracting the effect of histamine) is effective in treating allergic reactions. This discovery led to development of the first antihistamine drug for humans in 1942, and in 1944 one of Bovet’s own discoveries, pyrilamine, was produced as a drug.
In 1947 Bovet was invited to establish a laboratory of chemotherapeutics at the Superior Institute of Health in Rome, and eventually he took Italian citizenship. There he turned his attention to curare, a drug used to relax muscles during surgery. Because the drug was expensive and somewhat unpredictable in its effects, a low-cost dependable synthetic alternative was desired. Bovet produced hundreds of synthetic alternatives, of which gallamine and succinylcholine came into widespread use.
In 1964 Bovet became professor of pharmacology at the University of Sassari, on the Italian island of Sardinia. He served as the head of the psychobiology and psychopharmacology laboratory of the National Research Council (Rome) from 1969 until 1971, when he became professor of psychobiology at the University of Rome (1971–82).