DC's home page  |   Improbable science  |   How to get good science  |  

In memoriam The Department of Pharmacology at UCL 1905 - 2007 On June 13th 2007, UCL's Council endorsed the wish of the provost to disestablish all departments in the Faculty of Life Sciences at UCL 100 years of history and a world-wide brand name have gone.  It remains to be seen what will rise from the ashes. Is this a far-sighted step into the future, or is it just another sign of the removal of power from academics to managers?  Only time will tell.

Holders of the established UCL chair of Pharmacology (now known as the A. J Clark chair).

A.R.Cushny, FRS (1905 -1919), A. J. Clark FRS (1919 - 1926), E. B. Verney FRS 1926 - 1934), J. H. Gaddum FRS (1935 - 1938),
F. R. Winton (1938 - 1961), H.O.Schild, FRS. (1961-1973), J.W.Black, FRS. (1973-1978), H.P.Rang, FRS. (1979-1983), D. Colquhoun FRS, (1985 - 2004)

Heads of department (from 1983)

Donald H. Jenkinson (1983 - 1987), David A. Brown FRS (Astor Chair of pharmacology) (1987 - 2002), Trevor G Smart (Schild chair of pharmacology) (2002 -    )

The Department's web site (while it still exists) tells you what we are now, and about  our 100 years of history. The Department has consistently achieved the highest ranking in the UK in the Research Assessment exercise. What more could UCL ask of us?

Here is a very abbreviated history.

The Department was founded in 1905, The first holder of the established chair Arthur R Cushny did amazingly prescient work on the actions of calcium on the strength of the heart, and was a pioneer in the investigation of the effects of optical isomers (some of his work on optical isomers of hyoscine was used by 'Student' (W.S. Gossett) in his famous 1908 paper "The probable error of the mean" (Gossett was working at UCL with Karl Pearson at the time).

A.J Clark, who succeeded Cushny in 1919 was a great pioneer of quantitative pharmacology.  His book, The Mode of Action of Drugs on Cells (1933) is a classic.  His quantitative work on antagonism paved the way for the solutions provided by his successors, Gaddum and Schild.  His textbook, Applied Pharmacology (1926) is still in existence in the form of Pharmacology by Rang, Dale, Ritter and Moore, which itself is in its 5th edition.

The names of Gaddum and Schild are central in the development of pharmacology.  The Schild equation is still the standard method for analysis of competitive antagonists from pharmacological data.  His approach to receptor classification is what inspired Sir James Black's work on adrenaline and histamine antagonists, work that got a Nobel prize in 1988,