[1] He was born in Ekaterinoslav, Russia (now Dnipro, Ukraine), moving to Berlin at an early age.
In 1926 he went to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Biologie where he worked in the laboratory under Otto Meyerhof.
Leaving Nazi-era Berlin, Nachmansohn arrived in Paris in 1933 and took up a position in the Sorbonne.
[3] This work also demonstrated a strong connection between the release of acetylcholine and the electric discharge.
In 1942 Nachmansohn moved into a laboratory at Columbia University where his group continued to publish on the mechanism underlying electric discharge in fish; using electric eels provided by the aquarium of the New York Zoological Society.