| Author | Comment |
|---|
| Albuquerque EX | Edson Xavier de Albuquerque was born in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil on January 22, 1938, and died in Maryland, US, in July 2018. In 1962 he obtained a Ph.D in Physiology and Pharmacology in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1974, Edson became Professor and Chair of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Marylands School of Medicine. Dr. Albuquerque contributed groundbreaking insights into the understanding of the pathophysiology of neurological disorders and the development of treatments against the toxic effects of organophosphorus poisons. In memoriam , and the message from Pr. Hermona Soreq, chair of the Cholinergic Meetings IAB of which Edson was a member. |
| Aldridge WN | W. Norman Aldridge was born in 1919 and died in 1996. He established much of the basic enzymology on the interaction of organophosphorus esters with esterases. He classified these into A, B, or C esterases according to whether organophosphorus esters were hydrolyzed by them, were inhibited, or did not interact either way. A tribute to his work was published by Martin K. Johnson obituary paper. |
| Alles GA | Gordon A. Alles was born on November 26, 1901 and died on January 21, 1963, He was an American chemist and pharmacologist. With Hawes RC he distinguished BChE in plasma and AChE on blood cells. |
| Augustinsson KB | Klas-Bertil Augustinsson was born 18th June 1917 in Stockholm and died October 27, 1978 in Djursholm. Married in 1945 to Margaret Lindqvist, born in 1921. Klas-Bertil Augustinsson studied esterases and cholinesterases in many animal species, he worked also on arylesterase and enzymatic hydrolysis of OP. |
| Austin L | Lawrence Austin was born in 1926 and died in 2000. Lawrie Austin was Reader in Biochemistry at Monash University. Together with W.K. Berry in Porton Down UK he devised the two inhibitors used to distinguish AChE and BChE (BW284C51, Iso-OMPA). |
| Axelrod J | Julius Axelrod (May 30, 1912 - December 29, 2004) was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work on the release, reuptake, and storage of the neurotransmitters adrenaline and noradrenaline along with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler. Many scientists working on cholinergic mechanisms worked as post-doc or collaborators in his lab: Leslie Iversen, Jacques Glowinski, Bert N LaDu |
| Barnard EA | Eric Albert Barnard FRS (2 July 1927 23 May 2018) was a British neuroscientist, and Professor at University of Cambridge. He was educated at King's College London (BSc; PhD, 1956).He died on 23 May 2018 at the age of 90 He was awarded the Thudichum Medal of the Biochemical Society in 2008 for his outstanding contributions to neurochemistry. Among other events he co-organized the second International Meeting on Cholinesterases in Bled in 1984 and the third in La Grande Motte in 1990 |
| Barrett AJ | Alan John Barrett was born in Battersea, London, on 21 August 1937 and died on 23 November 2020. Alan Barrett led the Molecular Enzymology group at Babraham. He established much of the basic enzymology on endopeptidases.He had an interest in the classification and naming of peptidases and with Neil D Rawlings developed the internationally recognized MEROPS website and database. An obituary paper (The Biochemist) by Dr. Rawlings retraces his achievements. |
| Benschop HP | Dr. Henk P. Benschop was born on September 19, 1939 and passed away on April 16 2013. Henk P. Benschop was a Senior Research Fellow at TNO (Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research). He Developed highly sensitive methods for (chiral) analysis of chemical nerve agents. A paper by Daan Noort retraces his achievements obituary paper. |
| Berry WK | Berry WK together with Lawrence Austin in Porton Down UK he devised the two inhibitors used to distinguish AChE and BChE (BW284C51, Iso-OMPA). He also determined the turnover of cholinesterases. |
| Bon C | Cassian Bon was born March 31, 1944 in Viet-Nam and died March 20, 2008 in Paris. His PhD mentor was Jean-Pierre Changeux. He had a double carrier at the CNRS and Pasteur Institute (1990-2005) and a third one at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (2005-2008), all in Paris, France. With his students and collaborators, he characterized and cloned the AChE found in the venom of the snake Bungarus fasciatus. An obituary paper by Grazyna Faure et Max Goyffon retraces his achievements |
| Broomfield CA | Clarence Broomfield was born on September 18, 1930 in Mount Morris, Michigan and passed away on November 2022. He was a major contributor to the field of AChE chemistry and the development of countermeasures against chemical warfare toxins. In particular he was the first to demonstrate that mutation of histidine could transform butyrylcholinesterase in a organophosphate hydrolase. He was an important mentor, a close collaborator, and a very good friend to many of the colleagues in the field |
| Brzin M | Miro Brzin was born April 13th, 1923 in Ljubija (Bosna and Hercegovina) and died the August 8th, 1999 in Ljubljana. Miro Brzin was full professor at the Institute of Pathophysiology in Ljubljana. Miro Brzin was the first who measured acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity in the isolated neuromuscular junctions and demonstrated its precise localization by electron microscope cytochemistry. A tribute to his work was given by Elsa Reiner at the 11th international symposium on cholinergic mechanisms (St Moritz) in 2002 (Reiner 2004). |
| Buccafusco JJ | Jerry Buccafusco was born in 1949 and died in March of 2010. He recognized cognitive enhancing effects of low doses of nicotine in non-human primates. The technics he developed served to look for neuronal nicotinic receptor agonists for the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and alzheimer's disease. |
| Buznikov GA | Gennady A. Buznikov was born on January 18, 1931, in Saint Petersburg Russia and died on August 27, 2012, in Los Angeles USA. He established a new role for neurotransmitters as developmental signals during embryogenesis. |
| Casida JE | John Edward Casida was born Dec. 22, 1929, in Phoenix, Arizona and died June 30 2018 in Berkeley, He earned a Ph.D. in entomology, biochemistry and plant physiology in 1954 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 1964, Casida joined UC Berkeleys entomology department. He was one of the worlds leading authorities on how pesticides work and how they can potentially harm humans |
| Cerasoli DM | Douglas Mark Cerasoli born in Arlington, died age 50 on June 15, 2017. After a PhD in Immunology from University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral studies at the University of Maryland, He pursued a career in medical research with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense where his scientific and leadership contributions on paraoxonases and cholinesterases have been considerable. |
| Coates CW | Christopher W Coates. Born in 1900 died in 1974 Head of the New York Aquarium. Responsible for providing hundreds of electric eel for the Columbia university group of D. Nachmanson and IB Wilson |
| Couteaux R | René Couteaux was born June 23 1909 in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux and died december 1999 in Paris. Rene Couteaux was a french neurobiologist. Couteaux and David Nachmansohn showed that acetylcholinesterase is almost exclusively concentrated at the neuromuscular synapse. René Couteaux extensively studied the -presynaptic active zone- A tribute to his work was given by Shigeru Tsuji at the 11th international symposium on cholinergic mechanisms (St Moritz) in 2002 (Shigeru Tsuji 2004). |
| Dale HH | Sir Henry Hallett Dale, (9 June 1875 - 23 July 1968) was an English pharmacologist and physiologist. For his study of acetylcholine as agent in the chemical transmission of nerve impulses (neurotransmission) he shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Loewi. He first extracted Acetylcholine from an ergot fungus Claviceps purpurea in 1914. Dale showed that some of the peripheral action of acetylcholine resembled those of muscarine (smooth musle, heart, and gland cells and these actions were sensitive to atropine) others those of nicotine (sympathetic and parasympethetic ganglia, adrenal medulla) He predicted the presence of a cholinesterase in blood. Loewi had shown in 1926 that nerves produce neurotransmitter called then -vagusstoff- (released from the vagus nerve). In 1929 Dale and Dudley extracted ACh from bovine and horse spleen and in 1936 Dale showed that ACh is liberated from motoneurones. |
| De Clermont P | Philippe de Clermont (born 1831 died in 1921) was a french organic chemist. He worked in Adolphe Wurtz's laboratory in Paris with the muscovite Wladimir Moschnin. He was known for the synthesis of the first organophosphate cholinesterase inhibitor (tetraethylpyrophosphate, TEPP) which he tested on himself without any trouble. This delayed the discovery of the effect of OP on nervous system. |
| De Robertis E | Eduardo D. P. De Robertis was born in Buenos Aires on december 11 1913 and died on May 31 1988 in Buenos Aires. Argentina's biologist who studied the generation of sex cells in amphibians, liver cytology,. He was the discoverer of microtubules within the cell. Papers by Claudio Cuello retrace his achievements obituary paper 1 2 |
| Doctor BP | Bhupendra P. Doctor, also known as BP or Doc, was born in 1930 in India and died in 2014 in Maryland, US. He was the Director of the Division of Biochemistry at The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. (now Silver Spring, MD). With many colleagues he produced monoclonal antibodies to AChE; purified, sequenced and cloned bovine AChE; and spearheaded the use of BChE as a stoichiometric scavenger of organophosphate compounds. He investigated the mechanisms of cholinesterase catalysis, alkylphosphate inhibition and nucleophilic reactivation. A tribute to BP by Palmer Taylor can be found here BPDoctor.pdf. |
| Eccles JC | Sir John Carew Eccles was born on January 27 1903 and died on May 2 1997. He was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize with Andrew Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin. |
| Fatt P | Paul Fatt was born on 13 January 1924 and died on September 2014. He was a British neuroscientist, professor at University College London. With Bernard Katz, he developed the quantal hypothesis for neurotransmitters |
| Feldberg W | Wilhelm S. Feldberg was born in Hamburg Germany in 1900 and died in 1993 in London. In 1940, Feldberg together with David Nachmansohn and Alfred Fessard, provided the first unequivocal evidence for the electrogenic action of acetylcholine. He was the successor of Sir Henry Hallett Dale as the Head of the Division Physiology / Pharmacology at the National Institute of Medical Research in London he created the Feldberg Foundation for anglo-german scientific exchange. |
| Felder CE | Dr. Clifford Felder was born in 1953 and died in 2013. Dr Felder made important work on calculation of dipole moments of proteins and prediction if a protein sequence may be natively unfolded |
| Fernandez HL | Hugo L Fernandez was born in Chile in 1940 and died in 2012 in Tampa. He immigrated to the USA in 1967. He was Professor of Neurology, Physiology & Biophysics, College of Medicine, USF. He worked on axoplasmic transport, acetylcholinesterase and Calcitonin gene-related peptides. |
| Ferreira SH | Sergio Henrique Ferreira (October 4, 1934 - July 17, 2016) was a Brazilian physician and pharmacologist noted for the discovery of the bradykinin potentiating factor, which led to new and widely used anti-hypertension drugs |
| Fessard A | Alfred Fessard was born in Paris 1900 and died in 1982. In 1940, Fessard, together with Wilhelm S. Feldberg and David Nachmansohn, provided the first unequivocal evidence for the electrogenic action of acetylcholine. |
| Fraser TR | Sir Thomas Richard Fraser (1841 - 1920) was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist. He described the physiological action of the Calabar bean: Physostigma Venenosum (Balfour),E-ser-e or ordeal beans of the people of Calabar. Calabar bean contains physostigmine (eserine), a reversible cholinesterase inhibitor alkaloid. |
| Frolow F | Felix Frolow was born in 1947 and died on 28 August 2014. Trained as physicist at the Gorky State University in the USSR, he immigrated to Israel in 1972. He worked at the Weizmann Institute. Together with Drs Christian Oefner, Michal Harel, Lilly Toker, Joel Sussman and Israel Silman he participated in the determination of the structure of acetylcholinesterase. In 1998 he moved to Tel Aviv University. A paper by Oded Livnah and Linda Shimon retraces his achievements obituary paper |
| Gaddum JH | Sir John Henry Gaddum (31 March 1900 - 30 June 1965) was an English pharmacologist. From 1927-33, he worked with Henry Dale. With Ulf von Euler he discovered Substance P in 1931 and established the release of acetylcholine in autonomic ganglia |
| Ginsburg S | Dr. Sara Ginsburg synthetized with Dr. Irwin B. Wilson the 2-PAM (pralidoxime) a reactivator of cholinesterase inhibited by organophosphates simultaneously and independently of Green AL. See: Petroianu 2013 |
| Glowinski J | Jacques Glowinski (30 August 1936 5 November 2020) was a French pharmacist and biology researcher specializing in neurobiology and neuropharmacology for which he is considered one of the founding fathers in France. |
| Hagedorn I | Ilse Hagedorn was born on 17 May 1921 in Dresden and died on 17 December 2005 in Freiburg. She first worked on the structure determination and synthesis of Xanthocillin a naturally occuring antibiotic produced by Penicillium species. In Freiburg she started to work on oxime reactivators of acetylcholinesterase inhibited by organophosphorus. Among the more than 1000 oximes synthetized in Hagedorn laboratory (often referred as Hagedorn oximes), the most studied are named after the initials of co workers: LuH6 (Toxogonin) for Luttringhaus and Hagedorn, HS-6 for Schoene, HI-6 for Imro Stark, HLo 7 for Marlies Loffler HGG for Gross G. An obituary paper (ScienceDirect) by Peter Eyer retraces her achievements. |
| Hawes RC | Roland C. Hawes was born on October 04 1908 and died on january 12 1999. He began in chemical analysis and this led him into the scientific apparatus and instruments industry, where he worked in the field of spectrophotometry, California Institute of Technology. With Alles GA he distinguished BChE in plasma and AChE on blood cells. |
| Hebb CO | Catherine Olding Hebb (1912-1978) was a canadian born physiologist. She obtained her doctorate under Babkin, and moved to Edinburgh and Cambridge to work with Ide Burgh Daly and Feldberg. She joined the ARC institute in Babraham where she did extensive biochemical and physiological work on ACh as a neurotransmitter. Her brother Donald O Hebb was a prominent canadian Neuropsychologist. |
| Height JJ | Jude J. Height was born on February 28, 1951 and passed away on September 9, 2022. Judes career spanned over 40 years of esteemed selfless service to the U.S. Army, and Chemical Biological Center as a research chemist. Scott Pegan gave a lecture tribute to Jude J Height at the 14th meeting on cholinesterase in Bologna |
| Heilbronn E | Edith Heilbronn was born in 1925, in Furth, Northern Bavaria. and died on May 11, 1999. She was the main instigator of the series of International Symposia on Cholinergic Mechanisms. The first (1970) she organised in Skokloster, an old castle near Uppsala. She was the head of the Biochemistry Department of the Swedish Defence Research Establishment in Uppsala. She worked on the O/P nerve gases, then on the isolation of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and the induction of an experimental form of myasthenia gravis by injecting it into rabbits. A tribute to her work was given by Victor P Whittaker at the 11th international symposium on cholinergic mechanisms (St Moritz) in 2002 (Whittaker 2004). |
| Holmstedt B | Bo Holmstedt was born 1919 in the southern part of Sweden, and died in 2002. Bo Holmstedt studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute. He became full professor in toxicology at the Karolinska Institute in 1964. He studied organophosphate compounds. He described the synthesis of tabun. He developed a histochemical method to reveal cholinergic nerves. During the Alpha Helix expedition to the Amazons in 1967, he and his collaborators identified hallucinogens, 5-metoxy-N, -carboline-alkaloids, used by different South and American Indian tribes. A tribute to his work was given at the 11th international symposium on cholinergic mechanisms (St Moritz) in 2002. and an obituary paper by Malmfos T. |
| Iversen LL | Leslie Lars Iversen was born October 31st, 1937, in Exeter, UK and died on July 30th 2020. Leslie Iversen was an internationally renowned neuroscientist and pharmacologist. Past collaborators Solomon H. Snyder, Bevyn Jarrott, Anthony J. Turner, Philip M. Beart and Claudio Cuello published obituary papers: J. Neurochem. PNAS retracing his achievements. |
| Jenden DJ | Donald J Jenden was born on September 1, 1926 in England and passed away on January 28 2011 in USA. He made important contribution to the chemical determination of acetylcholine and the determination of regulatory mechanisms of choline production. A Festschrift in a special issue of Life Science includes the proceeding of a meeting held in UCLA in 1996, and retraces his achievements |
| Johnson MK | Dr. Martin Keith Johnson, born in 1930, died in Banstead, Surrey on the 9th November 2018. Dr. Johnson was a founder member of the British Toxicology Society.In the early years of his carrier he worked in the Biochemical Mechanisms Group run by Dr Norman Aldridge. He discovered the neuropathy target esterase (NTE) as an enzyme activity, inhibited by low concentrations of the neuropathic OP, mipafox, but resistant to an AChE-directed OP, paraoxon. A paper by Ted Lock, Andrew Smith and Paul Glynn retraces his achievements Obituary |
| Kalow W | Werner Kallow was born in Cottbus Germany and died on February 16th 2008 at the age of 91 in Toronto. Werner Kallow was a pioneer in the field of pharmacogenetics. He discovered the first genetic variant of butyrylcholinesterase: Kalow and Staron. |
| Karczmar AG | Alexander George Karczmar (known as Nicky), an American neuroscientist and academician, was born on May 9, 1917, in Warsaw, Poland and died in Chicago in August 2017 at the age of 100. He served from 1956 to 1986 as professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Loyola University of Chicago Medical Center. He is widely recognized for his experimental research devoted to the cholinergic system, both central and peripheral, and its autonomic and mental functions, including its control of behaviors. He was a founding member of International Symposia on Cholinergic Mechanisms, an active participant for over 30 years and was elected Honorary President of the International Advisory Board. An obituary paper, also in pdf by Hermona Soreq and Israel Silman retraces his achievements. |
| Katz B | Sir Bernard Katz was born on March 26 1911 in Leipzig and died on April 20 2003 in London. He was a German-born biophysicist, he discovered with Paul Fatt that neurotransmitter release at synapses is quantal that is, that at any particular synapse the amount of neurotransmitter released is never less than a certain amount, and if more is always an integral number times this amount. He shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1970 with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler. |
| Kewitz H | Helmut Kewitz was born 25. Juli 1920 in Berlin and died in Oktober 2009 in Berlin. As toxicologist in University of Columbia he tested on mice the 2-PAM (pralidoxime) a reactivator of cholinesterase synthetized by Dr. Sara Ginsburg and Dr. Irwin B. Wilson |
| Kitz RJ | Richard J. Kitz was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Oct. 25, 1929 September 19, 2017 Dr.Kitz led the Massachussetts General Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine from 1969 to 1994. Irwin B. Wilson and Richard J. Kitz described the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase in two steps by covalently acting molecules which rapidly and reversibly bind to the active site of the enzyme. Next, the reversible complex undergoes covalent fixation at a characteristic rate |
| Koelle GB | George Brampton Koelle was born in 1918 and died in 1997 in Philadelphia. Koelle with Friedenwald invented the Koelle technique which involved exposure of a tissue section to thio analogues of acetyl, benzoyl, and butyrycholine. The enzyme hydrolyzes the substrate, liberates thiocholine as a mercaptide, which is then replaced by cupric sulfide, resulting in a black precipitate that localizes the choline esterase. |
| La Du BN | Bert Nicholas La Du, Jr. , M.D., Ph.D. 1920 - January 30, 2005. Dr. Bert N. La Du, Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan, was President of ASPET from 1978-1979. Dr. La Du's primary research interests were the biochemistry of drug metabolism and pharmacogenetics. He pioneered work on variants of Butyrylcholinesterase and Paraoxonases. A tribute to his work was given by Oksana Lockridge at the 6th international meeting on cholinesterases (San Diego) in 1998 (Lockridge 1998) and ASPET LaDu.pdf |
| Lange W | Willy Lange, Oct. 31, 1900 - May 19, 1976; studied chemistry at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin, Germany. Prepared sodium monofluorophosphate in 1929. Attempts to isolate the free monofluophosphoric acid led to the preparation of some of its esters, in 1932, with one of his graduate students, Gerda von Krueger. They recognized the toxicity of these esters (see: Petroianu 2010) |
| Langley JN | John Newport Langley was born on 2 November 1852 and died on 5 November 1925. He was a British physiologist. He spent his entire career at Cambridge University. He was at the origin of the concept of -receptive substance- He worked extensively with nicotine, physostigmine and curares and showed an effect of ACh on muscle. |
| Laqueur L | Ludwig Laqueur was born in 1839 and died in 1909 in Strasbourg. In 1875 he used for the first time physostigmine in glaucoma, unknowing about the mechanism of action of the drug. He was himself suffering from glaucoma and was one of his first patient successfully treated. He published a full report of his finding in 1877 |
| Loewi O | Otto Loewi (3 June 1873 - 25 December 1961) was a German-born pharmacologist. He showed that synaptic signaling used chemical messengers (1926). In 1930 with Engelhardt (Engelhardt and Loewi) he demonstrated the presence of cholinesterase in blood using physostigmine (eserine). Loewi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Sir Henry Hallett Dale. |
| MacIntosh FC | Frank Campbell MacIntosh was born on December 24, 1909 died on September 11, 1992. He explored physiological factors that regulate ACh turnover. An obituary paper by Brian Collier retraces his achievements. |
| Massoulie J | Jean Massoulié was born in 1938 and passed away december 12 2011. Jean analysed the molecular polymorphism of cholinesterases at the Ecole Normale Superieur rue d'Ulm in Paris. In particular he discovered the asymetric forms and the association of tetramers of catalytic subunits with the collagen tail. He was the mentor and friend of the french scientists working on cholinesterases. Claire Legay gave a lecture tribute to Jean at the 11th meeting on cholinesterase (2012) in Kazan and with Israel Silman, Karl Tsim, Eric A Barnard, Patrick Masson, Rick Rotundo at the XIVth ISCM (2013) in Hangzhou. |
| Metcalf RL | Robert Lee Metcalf (November 13, 1916 November 11, 1998) was an American entomologist, environmental toxicologist, and insect chemical ecologist. Metcalf was noted for making environmentally safe pest control achievable |
| Millard CB | Oksana Lockridge gave a lecture tribute to Col. Charles B. Millard at the 14th meeting on cholinesterase in Bologna |
| Moralev SN | Sergei N. Moralev was born in 1951 and passed away on July 27, 2011. Dr Moralev was a leading researcher of the I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences. He worked on comparative enzymology, kinetics of cholinesterase catalysis, mathematical methods of analysis, structural analysis of proteins and conformational structure methods. A tribute to Dr. Moralev was given by Patrick Masson at the 11th International meetiing on cholinesterase held in Kazan in 2012. |
| Nachmansohn D | David Nachmansohn was born March 17 1899 in Jekaterinoslav, Russia (now Dnjetropetrowsk) and died November 2, 1983 in New York. He worked on the biochemistry of muscle in Otto Meyerhof's laboratory. He moved to Paris in 1933. He discovered that the electric fish tissue contained exceedingly high concentrations of acetylcholineesterase. In 1940, Nachmansohn, together with Wilhelm S. Feldberg and Alfred Fessard, provided the first unequivocal evidence for the electrogenic action of acetylcholine. Nachmansohn moved to New York in 1942 at Columbia University. A review of his work appeared in: |
| Nikolsky EE | Professor Evgeny E. Nikolsky passed away in June 2018 at 71. He was member of the Russian Academy of Science, Professor of physiology at the Medical School of Kazan and director of the Neuropharmacology laboratory of the Federal University of Kazan. Among other events he co-organized the 11th International Meeting on Cholinesterases in Kazan (RU) in 2012 |
| Numa S | Shosaku Numa was born in 1929 and passed away on february 15 1992. Numa pioneered the use of recombinant DNA technology to reveal the molecular structure of receptors and ion channels in excitable membranes. An obituary paper by Herbert Ladinsky retraces his achievements. |
| Parnas I | Itzchak Parnas was born November 11 1935 and died on November 28, 2012. Prof. Parnas was one of the founding fathers of Israel Neuroscience. He worked on neurotransmitter release: the calcium voltage hypothesis,and the effects of presynaptic receptors in the control of neurotransmitter release. Pr Israel Silman gave a lecture tribute to Itzchak Parnas at the XIVth ISCM 2013 in Hangzhou. |
| Pepeu G | Prof. Giancarlo Pepeu passed away in November 2021 at 91. Born in Milan Pepeu graduated in medicine at the University of Florence in 1954, Full professor of Pharmacology in Cagliari in 1968, he returned to Florence in 1974 where he taught in the Faculty of Medicine until 2005. He has contributed substantially to the understanding of the mechanisms of cholinergic neurotransmission in the central nervous system and of the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease. His more than 300 articles have had international resonance and have earned him numerous awards. |
| Quastel JH | Juda Hirsch Quastel was born on October 2 1899 and died on October 15, 1987. He was a British-Canadian biochemist who pioneered diverse research in neurochemistry, soil metabolism, cellular metabolism. |
| Reiner E | Elsa Reiner was born in Osijek in 1930 and passed away in Zagreb on July 5, 2011. Dr Elsa Reiner was an outstanding scientist with a high contribution to the enzymology of cholinesterases. Tributes to her were given by Z. Kovarik at he 11th meeting on Cholinesterase in Kazan (2012) and by Palmer Taylor, Zrinka Kovarik, and Zoran Radic at the XIV th ISCM in Hangzou (2013). An obituary paper by Peter Eyer and Ladislaus Szinicz retraces her achievements. |
| Robertson DA | Douglas Argyll Robertson (1837 - 3 January 1909) was a Scottish ophthalmologist and surgeon. He worked on the effects on the eye made by physostigmine (eserine), an extract from the Calabar bean (Physostigma venenosum). |
| Salpeter MM | Miriam M. Salpeter was born in 1939 and died October 24, 2000. Miriam Salpeter was chairwoman of the department of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University from 1982 to 1988. She specialized in electron microscopy and the study of regeneration and synapses. A tribute to her work was given by Lili Anglister at the 11th international symposium on cholinergic mechanisms (St Moritz) in 2002 (Anglister 2004). |
| Schrader G | Gerhard Schrader (25 February 1903 10 April 1990) was a German chemist specializing in the discovery of new insecticides In 1936 at IG Farben, he discovered tabun, an enormously toxic nerve agent. During World War II, under the Nazi regime, teams led by Schrader discovered two more organophosphate nerve agents Sarin (1938), Soman (1944), and after the war Cyclosarin (1949) |
| Stedman E | Edgar Stedman was born in 1890 in Surrey and died on May 8,1975 in Virginia USA. At the university of Edinburgh, in 1922 he determined the structure of eseroline and physostigmine.and worked on the synthesis of Neostigmine-Prostigmine for treatment of glaucoma. Based on substrate specificity he recognized two types of cholinesterases in horse organs. With Leslie Easson he studied the inhibition by Miotine. Stedman studied the stereo-selectivity of the optical isomers of epinephrin and related molecules. |
| Tauc L | Ladislav Tauc was born in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia in 1926 and died in 1999. He came in France in 1949 to work at the Institut Marey in Paris. He introduced a 'simplified' brain (the Aplysia nervous system) to study the cellular and molecular basis of neuronal activity. An obituary paper by Maurice Israel retraces his achievements. |
| Tawfik DS | Dan Salah Tawfik (28 May 1955 4 May 2021) was an Israeli biochemist, best known for his contributions in protein engineering, evolutionary biochemistry and, more particularly, enzyme evolution. A highly-cited contributor to the study of enzyme promiscuity. A paper by Mikael H Elias et al. retraces his achievements Obituary (see: Elias et al) (see also: Jackson et al) |
| Thesleff S | Stephen Wilhelm Thesleff, born January 6, 1924 in Helsinki, died October 8, 2020 in Lund, was a Finnish-Swedish neuropharmacologist.His collaboration with Bernard Katz at University College London led in 1957 to a classical model for the desensitization of the receptors in the membrane of the recipient cell. |
| Tucek S | Stanislav Tucek was born on April 18, 1932 in Pardubice (Czech Republic) and died on September 27, 2002 in Prague. He worked with Catherine Hebb, Ann Silver, Frode Fonnum and Victor Whittaker. He worked extensively on synthesis of acetylcholine in neurons and the regulation of cholinergic neurotransmission. In 1978, he organised an international symposium on The Cholinergic Synapse in Zinkovy (Western Bohemia) |
| von Euler US | Ulf Svante von Euler was born on February 7 1905 and died on March 9 1983. He was a Swedish physiologist and pharmacologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters with Julius Axelrod and Bernard Katz. |
| Waser PG | Peter Gaudenz Waser was born on 21 July 1918 in Zurich and died on 11 April 2010 in Schiers. Professor of pharmacology, dean, and rector at Zurich University. In the 50's he studied the effects of radioactive labelled curare on neuromuscular junctions. He organized in 1974 the second International Symposium on Cholinergic Mechanisms in Boldern Switzerland |
| Whittaker M | Mary Whittaker was born in 1019 and died on 13 October 2013. She discovered many of the rare variants of cholinesterase (fluoride etc...). In 1937 and over 2 years she had developed symptoms of neurotoxicity due to OP, resulting in permanent handicap. She worked at King'sCollege and University of EXeter |
| Whittaker VP | Victor Percy Whittaker (11 June 1919 - 5 July 2016) was a British biochemist. In 1960 he isolated presynaptic nerve terminals from their axons. He named these detached nerve terminals synaptosomes. He showed that intact synaptic vesicles of high purity can be isolated from lysed synaptosomes. He attended the first International Symposium on Cholinergic Mechanisms (1970) (Skokloster, Sweden) and was an active member of the International Advisory Board for many years. An obituary paper by Herbert Zimmermann and Frode Fonnum retraces his achievements. |
| Wilson BW | Barry Wilson died on March 27th 2014. Barry was a major contributor to the cholinesterase field and attended many international cholinesterase meetings. He had multiple interests with the cholinesterases and related esterases extending from carbamate protection of organophosphate exposures and human blood cholinesterase variations to neurotoxic esterases. Being in an avian science department, he worked extensively with bird cholinesterases. His larger endeavors toward environmental protection were at the forefront. |
| Wilson IB | Irwin B Wilson was born on May 8, 1921 and passed away on Sunday, December 22, 2013. Irwin Wilson described features of the active site of acetylcholinesterase in collaboration with Felix Bergmann and David Nachmansohn. Irwin B. Wilson and Richard J. Kitz described the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase in two steps by covalently acting molecules which rapidly and reversibly bind to the active site of the enzyme. Next, the reversible complex undergoes covalent fixation at a characteristic rate. Wilson and Sara Ginsburg synthetized the 2-PAM (pralidoxime) a reactivator of cholinesterase inhibited by organophosphates simultaneously and independently of Green AL. See: Petroianu 2013. Important steps in his carrier are described in the -Irwin Wilson lecture- given by Israel Silman and Joel L Sussman in 1998 at the 6th meeting on cholinesterase in San Diego. |