Professor Alan North grew up in West Yorkshire and studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen before taking a PhD in pharmacology (1973). He moved to the US in 1975 as Associate Professor of Pharmacology at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, before becoming Professor of Neuropharmacology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Senior Scientist and Professor at the Vollum Institute of Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland. In 1993, he was appointed Principal Scientist at the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology, Geneva, and returned to England in 1998 as Professor of Molecular Physiology at the University of Sheffield, and Director of its Institute of Molecular Physiology.Professor North’s work has focused on a quantitative understanding of drug and transmitter action at the level of single cells and single molecules, primarily by biophysical and molecular biological approaches. His extensive publications deal with drug and neurotransmitter receptors, st
