Putting Theory into Practice: James Black, Receptor Theory and the Development of the Beta-Blockers at ICI, 1958–1978

The concept of drug receptors has played a significant role in the biomedical sciences and in pharmaceutical innovation in the second half of the twentieth century. Although the concept dates back to the work of the German bacteriologist and immunologist Paul Ehrlich and of the British physiologist John Newport Langley at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, its acceptance was delayed because of conflicting ideas about drug action, and because of uncertainties and hesitations about the concept itself.