Copyright foto: Stellan Ahl              



ARVID CARLSSON – A PRESENTATION


Arvid Carlsson, co-author of “Messengers of the Brain”, is professor emeritus of pharmacology at the University of Gothenburg. Arvid Carlsson was awarded the Nobel Prize of medicine and physiology in 2000, for his studies in the nineteen-fifties and -sixties on how brain cells transmit signals to each other, with the help of chemical messengers, neurotransmitters. These studies laid the groundwork for developing the first medicine against Parkinson’s disease and improved treatments for schizophrenia, depression and other neurological and psychiatric disorders. Arvid Carlsson has been called “the Father of Dopamine” for his discovery of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is of vital importance for the muscular movements and the mental functions. 
 
Despite his pensioning, Arvid is still fully active as a researcher, and research takes a lot of his time. As often as he can however and when the weather is fine Arvid goes to the family’s country house in Onsala, south of Gothenburg. There he relaxes with gardening, sea-bathing, and being together with his family. All the year round Arvid devotes himself to solving crosswords in his spare time, to keep his brain going. He also likes to listen to classical music as well as Louis Armstrong.

 

BACKGROUND

Arvid Carlsson was born in Uppsala, Sweden, on January 25, 1923. He entered medical studies at the University of Lund, Sweden, in 1941, and became a Doctor of Medicine, "M.D." (corresponding to American Ph.D.), in 1951. In 1959 Arvid Carlsson was made a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He became emeritus in 1989.

Arvid Carlsson is an author of several hundred peer-reviewed journal articles and the recipient of numerous awards and honours. Apart from the Nobel Prize of medicine and physiology he has been awarded the Japan Prize in Psychology and Psychiatry, The Research Prize of the Lundbeck Foundation (Denmark) and the Lieber Prize for research in schizophrenia (USA). Arvid Carlsson is a "Foreign Associate Member" of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, USA. He is also a member of the French Legion of Honour, and an honorary member of several Swedish and foreign Academies of Sciences.

 

 

 

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