Oleh Hornykiewicz

Oleh Hornykiewicz (1926 to 2020) was a Ukrainian-born biochemist and pharmacologist whose work on the human brain showed that Parkinson's disease is bound up with a loss of dopamine. Born in Sychów, now a district of Lviv, he fled to Vienna with his family in 1940, took his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1951 and later worked in Herman Blaschko's laboratory at Oxford. Back in Vienna he studied the brains of people who had had Parkinson's disease and found about ninety percent less dopamine in a region important for movement. That finding led him to test L-dopa, which restores dopamine, as a treatment, and it dramatically improved movement; L-dopa remains one of the main treatments for the disorder. From 1967 he was associated with the University of Toronto, where he and colleagues showed that L-dopa is converted into dopamine in the brain. Arvid Carlsson shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for related discoveries while Hornykiewicz was not included, a decision that disappointed many scientists. His honours included the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1979. This entry records what was found and how it was received, and is not medical advice.