Educated at Cambridge University and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in his native city of London, Dale became, in 1904, director of the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories. His work there over the next ten years included the isolation (with Arthur Ewins) from ergot fungi of a pharmacologically active extract – acetylcholine – which he found had similar effects to the parasympathetic nervous system on various organs. It was later shown by Otto Loewi that a substance released by electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve was responsible for effecting changes in heartbeat. Following up this work, Dale showed that the substance is in fact acetylcholine, thus establishing that chemical as well as electrical stimuli are involved in nerve action. For this research, Dale and Loewi shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Dale also worked on the properties of histamine and related substances, including their actions in allergic and anaphylactic conditions. He was the chairman of an international committee responsible for the standardization of biological preparations, and from 1928 to 1942 was director of the National Institute for Medical Research.