Professor David Nutt

David is Prof of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. He obtained an Open Scholarship in Medicine at Downing College Cambridge then at Guy’s hospital. After MRCP he took psychiatry at Oxford where he did his DM at the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Unit, then becoming a Wellcome Senior Fellow. He then spent two years as head of the research ward at NIAAA in the USA before setting up the Psychopharmacology unit at Bristol University in 1988, where he later became Prof of Psychopharmacology and Dean of Clinical Medicine before moving to Imperial in 2008. He has held presidencies of the EBC, BAP, BNA and ECNP, was chair of the ACMD and founded the charity DrugScience.David’s contributions to pharmacology include GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction and the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelics. He has over 500 original research papers, a similar number of reviews/book chapters, eight government reports and 36 books. In 2013 he was awarded the John Maddox Prize from Nature/Sense about Science and in 2017 a Doctor of Laws hon causa from the University of Bath.