The experimental measurements on which the pair based their action potential theory represent one of the earliest applications of a technique of electrophysiology known as the "voltage clamp". The second critical element of their research was the so-called giant axon of Atlantic squid (Loligo pealei), which enabled them to record ionic currents as they would not have been able to do in almost any other neuron, such cells being too small to study by the techniques of the time. The experiments took place at the University of Cambridge beginning in the 1930s and continuing into the 1940s, after interuption by World War II. The pair published their theory in 1952.
Huxley was a son of the writer and editor Leonard Huxley by his second wife Rosalind Bruce, and hence a grandson of the biologist T. H. Huxley.