Greengard, Paul (1925-2019), an American neurobiologist, won the 2000 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his discoveries on the transmission of signals between nerve cells. He shared the prize with two other scientists, Arvid Carlsson of Sweden and Austrian-born Eric R. Kandel of the United States. The three scientists shared the award for their discoveries on the chemical workings of the brain.
Greengard studied the action of dopamine, one of a group of chemicals called neurotransmitters, which carry information from one neuron (nerve cell) to another. Neurons that respond to dopamine have structures called dopamine receptors on their surface. Greengard found that dopamine triggers a series of reactions within neurons that have dopamine receptors. The reactions change the shape and function of certain proteins within the cell. The shape of the altered protein determines the function of the neuron and how the signal will be transmitted to other neurons.
Scientists believe that a disruption of dopamine reactions in the brain is involved in certain physical and mental disorders, such as Parkinson disease and schizophrenia. Greengard’s discoveries have helped scientists develop drugs to treat these disorders. The drugs work by changing the amount of, or altering the action of, dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain.
Greengard was born on Dec. 11, 1925, in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. In 1948, he graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He earned M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1953. He held teaching positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1983, he became a professor and established the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University in New York City, where he spent the rest of his career. Greengard died on Apr. 13, 2019.
