ABOVE: ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY, PIOTR REDLINKSKI
Nobel laureate Paul Greengard, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, died Saturday (April 13). He was 93.
Greengard is best known for his work showing that the brain not only communicates with electrical signals but also with chemicals such as dopamine. His studies investigating how cells respond to dopamine provided the evidence needed to develop antipsychotic drugs that regulate the strength of chemical signals in the brain, according to The New York Times.
“Paul was an iconic scientist whose extraordinary seven-decade career transformed our understanding of neuroscience,” Richard Lifton, Rockefeller’s president, says in a statement. “His discoveries laid out a new paradigm requiring the understanding of the biochemistry of nerve cells rather than simply their electrical activities. This work has had great impact. Today, abnormalities in signaling among neurons are recognized to underlie many neurologic and psychiatric disorders including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity ...
