Paul Greengard

Neurobiologist

• Born: December 11, 1925
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: April 13, 2019
• Place of death: New York City, U.S.

Greengard researched signal transduction in neurons and the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on dopamine. His discoveries help scientists understand how the brain functions and disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Areas of achievement: Science and technology; education

Early Life

Paul Greengard was born in New York City on December 11, 1925, to Benjamin Greengard and Pearl Meister. His mother, who was Jewish, died while giving birth to him. Greengard’s father remarried when Greengard was one year old. His stepmother was Episcopalian, and Greengard was raised Christian, despite his Jewish heredity.

Greengard grew up and received his primary education in New York City. During World War II, he served in the US Navy as an electronics technician. After the war, he graduated from Hamilton College in 1948 with a degree in mathematics and physics. He wanted to pursue a graduate degree in physics, but at the time the only research being done in physics was on nuclear weapons. Because Greengard had no desire to contribute to weapons research, he pursued a doctoral degree in biophysics. Greengard got his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1952, where he researched neuroscience, a developing field. Even after receiving his doctorate, Greengard continued postdoctoral studies at a number of renowned European universities, in London, Cambridge, and Amsterdam.

Greengard was a professor of pharmacology and psychiatry at Yale University from 1968 to 1983. He then became the head professor at the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University in New York in 1983. After having been married and divorced twice, Greengard married Ursula von Rydingsvard, a well-known sculptor; he had three children.

Life’s Work

While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, Greengard attended a lecture by Alan Hodgkin, which inspired Greengard to study the nervous system. As a result of Hodgkin’s lecture, Greengard became interested in neuroscience and the function of neurotransmitters in the brain. Since then, he has dedicated his life to researching and to teaching neuroscience, particularly the communication that occurs between nerve cells in the brain. His work has shown how neurotransmitters work and how they affect the brain physically and mentally.

Greengard won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000, along with Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel. Greengard found that neurotransmitters alter the function of nerve cells through a process he called slow synaptic transmission. This controls functions such as mood and alertness. In his research, Greengard further discovered a sort of domino effect that occurs with dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, and nerve cells. When nerve cells react with dopamine, there is an increase in cyclic AMP-regulated phosphoprotein-32 (DARPP-32). Greengard found that DARPP-32 activates proteins that can affect signal transmission in areas of the brain that control functions such as speech, movement, and sensory perception. Greengard’s discoveries also helped to explain how certain drugs work to affect the brain, nerve cells, and neurotransmitters. Greengard decided to donate his prize money to Rockefeller University and created a $50,000 prize for women as part of the effort to counteract bias against women in the science field.

In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Greengard won multiple awards, including the New York City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology (1998), the Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research (1989), and the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health (1997).

After winning the Nobel Prize, Greengard continued working with his postgraduate students in the lab at Rockefeller University, despite advancing age, publishing several papers a year. In the twenty-first century, the bulk of his research went toward understanding the biochemistry of neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, in the hopes that discoveries can be made that will help advance treatments and possibly even cures. In 2010, in his mid-eighties, he located a new protein necessary for the formation of beta amyloid, which is the plaque that builds up in the brain of those with Alzheimer's. The hope was that this finding could lead to a drug that could slow or even stop the effects of the disease. In 2015, at the age of ninety, he was still working six days per week in the lab and had contributed to further discoveries of proteins and molecules that could be helpful in the creation of new drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Greengard was able to continue working further due to the team nature of the research process. He died in Manhattan on April 13, 2019, at the age of ninety-three.

Significance

Greengard’s work with neurotransmitters and signal transduction helped shape the field of neuroscience. Through his research, he discovered that DARPP-32 is a key molecule in dopamine reactions in the brain. Greengard’s findings demonstrated that disruptions in dopamine signaling can cause such neurological and psychiatric disorders as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. Because of his research, scientists have begun to understand and to treat more effectively Parkinson’s disease and other disorders generated by faulty signal transduction. In addition, because of Greengard’s Nobel Prize-winning research, insight has been provided into how drug abuse and therapeutic drugs affect brain function.

Bibliography

Dreifus, Claudia. “He Turned His Nobel into a Prize for Women.” New York Times, 26 Sept. 2006.

Gellene, Denise. "Paul Greengard, 93, Nobel Prize-Winning Neuroscientist, Is Dead." The New York Times, 14 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/obituaries/paul-greengard-dead.html. Accessed 1 May 2019.

Greengard, Paul. "A Nobel Laureate Turning Ninety Continues to Churn Out Ideas for New Drugs." Scientific American, 11 Dec. 2015, blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/nobel-laureate-paul-greengard-kept-churning-out-ideas-for-new-drugs-after-turning-90/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2016.

Kolata, Gina. "Finding Suggests New Aim for Alzheimer's Drugs." The New York Times, 1 Sept. 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/health/research/02alzheimer.html. Accessed 20 Apr. 2016.

“Paul Greengard.” Who’s Who in America. 64th ed., Marquis Who’s Who, 2010.

Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, editors. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd ed., Thomson, 2007.