1. Arvid Carlsson was a Swedish neuropharmacologist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter dopamine and its effects in Parkinson's disease.
17 Facts About Arvid Carlsson
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Arvid Carlsson was born on 25 January 1923 in Uppsala, Sweden, one of four siblings.
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Arvid Carlsson's family moved to Lund after his father became a history professor at Lund University.
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Arvid Carlsson received his MD and PhD in pharmacology in 1951.
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In 1951, Arvid Carlsson became an associate professor at Lund University.
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Arvid Carlsson spent five months as a research fellow for the pharmacologist Bernard Beryl Brodie at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, United States, and the change in his research focus to psychopharmacology eventually led to his Nobel Prize.
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In 1957 Katharine Montagu demonstrated the presence of dopamine in the human brain; later that same year Arvid Carlsson demonstrated that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in the brain and not just a precursor for norepinephrine.
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Arvid Carlsson went on to develop a method for measuring the amount of dopamine in brain tissues.
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Arvid Carlsson found that dopamine levels in the basal ganglia, a brain area important for movement, were particularly high.
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Arvid Carlsson then showed that giving animals the drug reserpine caused a decrease in dopamine levels and a loss of movement control.
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Arvid Carlsson was still an active researcher and speaker when he was over 90 years old and, together with his daughter Lena, he worked on OSU6162, a dopamine stabilizer which alleviates symptoms of post-stroke fatigue.
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Arvid Carlsson won many other awards including Israel's Wolf Prize in Medicine, the Japan Prize, and Italy's Feltrinelli Prize.
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Arvid Carlsson was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1975.
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Arvid Carlsson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Southern California in 2007.
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Arvid Carlsson married Ulla-Lisa Christoffersson in 1945 and they had three sons and two daughters.
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Arvid Carlsson opposed the fluoridation of drinking water in Sweden.
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Arvid Carlsson was a vocal opponent of homeopathy and worked to prevent homeopathic preparations from being classified as medication in Sweden.