This page contains the general site map (where to find what), a summary of what Hodgkin and Huxley accomplished, and what we are trying to do

In 1952, Hodgkin and Huxley wrote a series of five papers that described the experiments they conducted that were aimed at determining the laws that govern the movement of ions in a nerve cell during an action potential.

We hope to summarize Hodgkin and Huxley's work, with an engineering audience in mind. Thus, more time is spent exploring Hodgkin and Huxley's mathematical model and less time is spent on the biological impact their work had. We do explore the biology side of their work, but with an engineering background in mind. We also spend some time looking at the units that Hodgkin and Huxley used in thier original papers as well as the units used in textbooks on their work. We had noticed some inconsistencies and hope to show where the different units and values come from as well as give all of the units used in their mathematical model in SI units.

This website is organized into five categories.

Hodgkin and Huxley's work

This category contains the summary of Hodgkin and Huxley's work. The main page is an explanation of the final mathematical model they developed. Connected off of the main page are pages that are devoted to summarys of Hodgkin and Huxley's earlier papers. These pages give a better background of where the model came from and the experiments Hodgkin and Huxley based their model off of. This page also contains a link to our previous work.

Summary of Model

• First Paper
• Second Paper
• Third Paper
• Fourth Paper
• Our Previous Work

Biology

This section attempts to explain the Hodgkin-Huxley experiments from a biological perspective. Hodgkin and Huxley's work with the giant squid axon was the first to use mathematical models to represent biological systems. Due to Hodgkin and Huxley's findings, we are able to understand how an action potential propagates along a nerve and the functions of their associated ion channels.

• The Resting Potential
• The Model Cell
• The Constant Field Equation
• The Resting Membrane Potential
• The Action Potential

History

This page contains a brief summary of the work that was done prior to Hodgkin and Huxley. It also contains a link to Biographical information about the two scientists

• History
• Biography

Table of Units

This category contains in table form the units and values used in Hodgkin and Huxley's work, different textbooks as well as in SI units. The front page is a list of the units used in Hodgkin and Huxley's model in SI units. It is linked to several pages of tables of units.

• Hodgkin and Huxley
• Enderle
• Hoppensteadt
• Scott
• Schwann

References

This page contains a list of the references we used in the construction of this website.

Hodgkin

Huxley

Cheever (he's a little shy)

The Neuron