Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, and John Eccles (for his research on synapses) were jointly awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane". In addition Hodgkin and Huxley's findings led them to suggest the existence of ion channels in cell membranes, which was confirmed decades later.