The story

In 1906 the English physiologist Henry Dale found that an extract of the back of the pituitary made the uterus contract, and named the hormone from the Greek for swift birth. In 1953 Vincent du Vigneaud in New York worked out its sequence and made it in the lab, the first peptide hormone ever synthesised, and won the 1955 Nobel Prize. Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg in Sweden then showed it is a whole-body anti-stress and healing system, not just a birth hormone. Russian physiology today reviews its role in behaviour, the autonomic nervous system and evolution, and in men's health.