Erlanger, wearing a white lab coat, seated in laboratory. No date given. Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965) was an American physiologist. He completed his B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and completed his M.D. in 1899 from the Johns Hopkins University where he worked as an instructor and professor until 1906. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1944 for the discovery of different types of nerve fibers. He lived to be 90 years old and died of natural causes. In 2009 a crater on the moon was named after him.