The fundamental properties of currents mediated by ion channels were analyzed by the British biophysicists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley as part of their Nobel Prize-winning research on the action potential, published in 1952. They built on the work of other physiologists, such as Cole and Bakers research into voltage-gated membrane pores from 1941. The existence of ion channels was confirmed in the 1970s by Bernard Katz and Ricardo Miledi using noise analysis . It was then shown more directly with an electrical recording technique known as the "patch clamp", which led to a Nobel Prize to Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann, the techniques inventors. Hundreds if not thousands of researchers continue to pursue a more detailed understanding of how these proteins work. In recent years the development of automated patch clamp devices helped to increase significantly the throughput in ion channel screening.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2003 was awarded to Roderick MacKinnon for his studies on the physico-chemical properties of ion channel structure and function, including x-ray crystallographic structure studies.