Glyceryl trinitrate (nitroglycerin) was synthesised by Sombrero in 1847. Amyl nitrite was discovered a few years later and was used by Guthrie in 1859. The first report on the action of glyceryl trinitrate and amyl nitrite was published by Brunton in 1867, and further papers were published by Murell in 1879.

When was nitroglycerin first used for angina?

Nitroglycerin was discovered by Ascanio Sobrero in 1847 following work with Theophile-Jules Pelouze. It was first used to treat angina by William Murrell as early as 1876.

When did nitroglycerin become a medicine?

In 1998, about 130 years after Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite and the first observed clinical benefit of nitroglycerin, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for “Nitric Oxide as a Signaling Molecule in the Cardiovascular System”.