Alan Hodgkin realized that, to understand ion flux across the membrane, it was necessary to eliminate differences in membrane potential. Using experiments with the voltage clamp, Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley published 5 papers in the summer of 1952 describing how ionic currents give rise to the action potential. The final paper proposed the Hodgkin–Huxley model which mathematically describes the action potential. The use of voltage clamps in their experiments to study and model the action potential in detail has laid the foundation for electrophysiology; for which they shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.