Solomon H. Snyder

1979

Solomon H. Snyder (born December 26, 1938) is an American neuroscientist from Washington D.C., who spent most of his time researching addiction and its effects on the brain. He studied at Georgetown University, and conducted the majority of his research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Many advances in molecular neuroscience have stemmed from Dr. Snyder's identification of receptors for neurotransmitters and drugs and elucidation of the actions of psychotropic agents.^[1] He is most famously known for his research on the opioid receptor, for which he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.

Biography

Early Life

Solomon Snyder was born on December 26, 1938 in Washington D.C. He was one of four children. Solomon adopted a passion for guitar from his father.

Education and Early Career

Snyder attended Georgetown University from 1955 to 1958 and received his M.D. degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1962. After a medical residency at the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. He served as a research associate from 1963 to 1965 at the NIH, where he studied under Julius Axelrod. Snyder moved to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to complete his residency in psychiatry from 1965 to 1968. He was appointed to the faculty there in 1966 as Assistant

Professor of Pharmacology. In 1968 he was promoted to Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry and in 1970 to Full Professor in both departments.

His laboratory is noted for the use of receptor binding studies to characterize the actions of neurotransmitters and psychoactive drugs.

He is also known for his work identifying receptors for the major neurotransmitters in the brain, in the process explaining the actions of psychoactive drugs, such as the blockade of dopamine receptors by antipsychotic medications. He has described novel neurotransmitters such as the gases nitric oxide and carbon monoxide and the D-isomers of amino acids, notably D-serine.

Later Career

Presently he is University Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1980, he founded the Department of Neuroscience, and served as its first director from 1980 to 2006. In 2006, the department was renamed as the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience in his honor.

In 1980, he served as the President of the Society for Neuroscience. He is also Associate Editor, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). He helped start the companies Nova Pharmaceuticals and Guilford Pharmaceuticals and has been an active philanthropist.

He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as one of the 10 most-often cited biologists and he also has the highest h-index of any living biologist.

Dr. Snyder is also the of Director of Drug Discovery at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development ^[2] in Baltimore, MD.

Family

Snyder and his wife, who have two grown daughters and three grandchildren, live in Baltimore, Maryland.

Awards

• Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1978): In 1973, with then-graduate student Candace Pert, he discovered the opioid receptor and later identified the existence of normally occurring opiate-like peptides in the brain.
• Wolf Prize (from the President of Israel in 1983^[1])
• Bower Award of the Franklin Institute(1992^[3])
• National Medal of Science (2003)
• Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2007)^[1]
• He is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates and has been elected to honorific societies including the US National Academy of Sciences,^[1] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,^[1] and the American Philosophical Society.^[1]

Sources

• Johns Hopkins page
• Lieber Institute for Brain Development
• Biography of Solomon Snyder from the NIH Foundation^[1]
• Biography of Solomon Snyder from The National Academies
• Money for Brains^[3]
• Solomon H. Snyder^[4]
• Science and Psychiatry: Groundbreaking Discoveries in Molecular Neuroscience^[5]
• Apprentice to Genius^[6]

References