My father passed away this evening, so I will be offline for a while...
His papers are at Vanderbilt University, for those readers who would like to learn more about him:
Papers of Murray E. Jarvik, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles. Research interests include effects of drugs upon learning and retention, neurophysiological basis of learning, localization of drug effects in the central nervous system, psychopharmacology, primate behavior, smoking behavior and nicotine addiction.Among his many scientific discoveries is the nicotine patch used to treat smoking addiction. From UCLA Magazine:
16. Under Your SkinUCLA obituary here.
What: The Nicotine Patch
Who: Scientists Murray E. Jarvik M.A. '45 and Jed Rose
Impact: Jarvik and Rose (then a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA) were curious about "green tobacco illness," a malady striking tobacco farmhands harvesting the crop in the South. That led to research on the potential positive implications of absorbing tobacco through the skin, which resulted in the creation of the transdermal patch that delivers nicotine directly into the body. The patch was first available in the U.S. by prescription in 1992. Four years later, it was approved for over-the-counter sale. Research shows that tools such as the patch can double smokers' chances of quitting successfully. Jarvik, now 83 and retired, posits that California was a likely place from which this invention would spring, "because people here walk around with so much skin exposed."
Eureka moment: When the researchers could not get approval to run experiments on any subjects, they tested their idea on themselves. "We put the tobacco on our skin and waited to see what would happen," Jarvik recalls. "Our heart rates increased, adrenaline began pumping, all the things that happen to smokers."
— Kristine Breese '86
LA Times obituary here:
JARVIK, Murray E.
Died peacefully May 8, 2008 at his Santa Monica home. Born June 1, 1923 in New York City. Son of Jacob and Minnie (Haas) Jarvik. Survived by his beloved wife of 53 years, Lissy; sons, Laurence (Nancy); Jeffrey (Gail); and grandchildren, Ella, Leah, and Ethan. A scientist and inventor with a number of patents, best known for the nicotine patch, he was emeritus professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at UCLA and former chief of psychopharmacology at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. He was an alumnus of George Washington High School, where he won first prize in the Westinghouse Science Fair for a wooden working model of an iron lung exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History. He graduated from City College of New York, where he was research assistant for psychologist Kenneth Clark and worked with Nobel-prize laureates at Rockefeller University. He became interested in experimental psychology while working for his MA at UCLA, and concentrated on learning, memory and probability for his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley as a student of Edward Chace Tolman. He received his MD from UC San Francisco. He conducted behavioral research on one-trial learning in primates at Yerkes Laboratory, and pioneering LSD research as a Fellow in Psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Hospital (NY), and later became one of the originators of the field of psychopharmacology. He was a founding member of the faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he rose to the rank of full professor of pharmacology and psychiatry, and taught monkeys to smoke, before moving to UCLA. He was a founding member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and active in numerous other scientific and professional organizations. His family remembers him as a professor, scientist, inventor, friend, and loving husband, father, and grandfather. Funeral services will be held at noon Monday, May 12th, at Eden Memorial Park, 11500 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, CA, 818-361-7161. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, B'nai Brith, the American Lung Association, and Planned Parenthood.
NY Times obituary here. NOTE: The NY Times got my father's birthplace wrong--Murray E. Jarvik was born on June 1, 1924 at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in Manhattan, not in the Bronx (as obituary writer Bruce Weber stated).
A former employee's remembrance here.
An LA Times article here
UCLA Daily Bruin article here
The Independent (UK) obituary here
Times of London obituary here
Agence France Presse story here:
Le père du patch à la nicotine n'est plusAlgo en Espanol, por R.J. Nieto, aqui, y desde El Pais, aqui
L'un des pionniers américains de la lutte contre le tabagisme, co-inventeur du patch à la nicotine, Murray Jarvik, est décédé jeudi à l'âge de 84 ans, à son domicile de Santa Monica, en Californie.
C'est ce que l'on pouvait lire sur le site internet de l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles où il était professeur émérite. Murray Jarvik, qui enseignait la psychiatrie et la pharmacologie à UCLA, souffrait de problèmes cardiaques depuis plusieurs années, selon l'université.
Né à New York en 1923, il a été l'un des pionniers de la psychopharmacologie et a été l'un des premiers à étudier les effets du LSD et d'autres drogues sur la mémoire et l'addiction.
En vente libre
Dans les années 1990, il a inventé avec l'un de ses collègues de UCLA Jed Rose, devenu depuis directeur du Centre de recherches sur la nicotine et l'arrêt du tabac à l'Université Duke, en Caroline du Nord, le patch à la nicotine.
Ce procédé diffuse la substance directement à travers l'épiderme et permet aux fumeurs de moins ressentir les effets du manque. Les patchs à la nicotine ont été rendus disponibles sur ordonnance aux Etats-Unis à partir de 1992, et en vente libre quatre ans plus tard.
afp/hof