| Authorised form of name | Iversen; Leslie Lars (1937-2020) |
| Dates | 1937-2020 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Exeter, Devon, England, United Kingdom |
| Date of birth | 31/10/1937 |
| Date of death | 30/07/2020 |
| Occupation | Pharmacologist |
| Research field | Neuroscience |
| Neurotransmitters |
| Activity | Education:
University of Cambridge, BA in Biochemistry (1961), PhD in Pharmacology (1964)
Career:
Director of the Medical Research Council Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit, Cambridge (1971-1982); Director of the Merck, Sharp & Dohme Neuroscience Research Centre (1982-1995); Visiting Professor of Pharmacology, Department of Pharamacology, University of Oxford (1995-2020); Director of the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases at Kings College London (1999-2004); Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (2010-)
Honours:
CBE
Memberships:
American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Academia Europaea
|
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 20/03/1980 |
| Age at election | 42 |
| RSActivity | Royal Society roles:
Council: 1990-1991
Committee and panels:
Sectional Committee 8 (2004-2007); Sectional Committee 10 (2010-2013); Research Appointment Panel B (1999-2007)
Lectures:
Ferrier 1983 |
| Relationships | Married Susan Iversen FMedSci (1961) |
| PublishedWorks | https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80090075/ |
| OtherInfo | Through his contributions to the neurochemistry of synaptic transmitters, Leslie Iversen placed the study of uptake processes for noradrenaline on a quantitative basis and discovered a second non-neuronal uptake which leads to a rapid metabolic degradation of the accumulated amines. He exploited uptake processes in the study of the turnover of catecholamines and other synaptic transmitters and as a basis of an electron microscopic radioautographic method for delineating the transmitter specificity of terminal boutons. By this means, it was shown that gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) was taken up by a clearly defined subpopulation of nerve terminals distributed throughout the central nervous system. A selective loss of GABA-containing cells has been found in the basal ganglia of patients with Huntingdon’s chorea. Leslie (with Ed Kravitz, Masanori Otsuka and Zach Hall) was the first to demonstrate that GABA was released from inhibitory nerve terminals. He demonstrated trans-synaptic regulation of enzymes concerned with transmitter biosynthesis and has carried out extensive studies of the effect of nerve growth factor on the biochemistry of sympathetic neurons.
Professor Leslie Iversen CBE FRS died on 30 July 2020. |
| Source | Sources:
https://royalsociety.org/people/leslie-iversen-11687/; Wikipedia; Department of Phrmacology, University of Oxford https, ://www.pharm.ox.ac.uk/team/leslie-l-iversen (accessed 6 August 2020) |
| Virtual International Authority File | http://viaf.org/viaf/18297678 |
| Code | NA4454 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| GLB/65/50 | Dr L L Iversen | March 1964 - January 1966 |
| IM/002381 | Iversen, Leslie Lars | nd |
| EC/1980/14 | Iversen, Leslie Lars: certificate of election to the Royal Society | 1975 |