Dr Alistair Corbett

After studying for an Honours degree and PhD in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Glasgow, Alistair Corbett took up a post-doctoral position in 1978 with Professor Hans Kosterlitz at Aberdeen University. Kosterlitz was the doyen of opioid pharmacology and this was an exciting time to work in the field being only a few years after Kosterlitz and Hughes had isolated the first endogenous opioid peptides, the enkephalins. Although the position was initially only for 12 months, it heralded the start of a collaboration and friendship which lasted for nearly 17 years, led to more than 40 joint publications and a life-long interest in opioids. Alistair left Aberdeen in 1995 for a lectureship at Glasgow Caledonian University, was appointed Head of the new Department of Life Sciences there in 2011 and retired in 2016. He was elected Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society in 2012.