Herbert Spencer Gasser (July 5, 1888 – May 11, 1963) was an American physiologist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944 for his work with action potentials in nerve fibers while on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, awarded jointly with Joseph Erlanger.

His father was a physician[7][8] from Dornbirn in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg; his mother was of New England Yankee and German Russian ancestry.

As the United States became involved in World War I and the armies began using chemical warfare, Gasser was urged to contribute his knowledge of human physiology to the subject.

During the years 1923–1925 Gasser studied in London, Paris and Munich under a Rockefeller Foundation grant, with the goal of improving the caliber of US medical education.

[13][14][15] In 1936 Gasser and Erlanger gave a series of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, summarizing their investigations into the actions of human nerve cells.