Oleh Hornykiewicz, a pharmacologist at the University of Toronto and the Brain Research Institute in Vienna whose research into Parkinson’s disease led to a groundbreaking treatment, died on May 26 at age 93.
Hornykiewicz was an early proponent of dopamine as an important neurotransmitter before its function was fully understood, and his research helped link a paucity of dopamine to Parkinson’s. This led Hornykiewicz to develop a dopamine-replacement therapy called L-dopa that remains a mainstay in mitigating symptoms to this day. In a 2007 interview with the Movement Disorder Society, Hornykiewicz recalled people “crying with joy” after regaining the ability to walk.
"Before L-dopa, persons with Parkinson’s disease were bedridden, crowding chronic hospital wards, and the doctors were powerless to do anything,” Stephen Kish, a longtime friend and colleague of Hornykiewicz at the University of Toronto, tells The New York Times. “His discovery changed all that; it was a miracle.”
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