Bernard Katz, quantal transmitter release and the foundations of presynaptic physiology.

The papers by Fatt & Katz (1952) and del Castillo & Katz (1954) were watershed events in the history of synaptic physiology because they established that neurotransmitters are released from presynaptic terminals in discrete ‘quanta’. Bernard Katz and colleagues employed the frog neuromuscular junction, an accessible peripheral synapse that had already been used to establish some basic principles of synaptic action. Using the then-new technique of