Murray Elias Jarvik
Authors: Ned Stafford
Journal: BMJ (2008)

As a scientist, Murray Jarvik never grew up. He bubbled with curiosity and was like a boy in the laboratory. He once brought in snails collected at home to his laboratory at UCLA (University of California-Los Angeles) “so we could run experiments like turning them on with LSD,” says Ronald Siegel, a former student and now associate research professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioural sciences at UCLA. “I saw him smile like a schoolboy.”

Murray’s father, an upholsterer, died when he was 11. Murray’s lifelong heart problems began at 12, when he contracted rheumatic fever. He developed other health problems, including polio when he was 28 and lung cancer in 1992, although he did not smoke cigarettes.

He earned an undergraduate degree in 1944 at City College of New York and then a masters degree in psychology at UCLA. In the early 1950s he received a medical degree from the University of California-San Francisco and PhD from the University of California-Berkeley. Siegel says that the psychologist Timothy Leary, the famous 1960s advocate of LSD, was a classmate of Murray’s at Berkeley. At least one press account says that Murray introduced LSD to a friend who subsequently introduced it to Leary.

“Murray did take LSD a few times,” Siegel says, adding that it was done for research and that he took a very clinical approach. “He was not swept away. Timothy Leary was swept away.”

In 1953 Murray took a fellowship in the psychiatry department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he studied d-lysergic acid, a precursor of LSD. Only later did Murray and the public learn that the research was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was seeking truth serums and other weapons. He met a young medical intern there, Lissy, who would become his wife of 53 years.

In 1955 Murray became assistant professor of psychopharmacology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. By the time Siegel applied for a postdoctoral position with Murray in 1970, Murray was one of the top experts in the world on LSD and hallucinogens. “I was in awe of him,” Siegel says. “He had written dozens of papers on LSD. He had made significant contributions on drugs and memory, drugs and behaviour.”

Murray’s marriage had a major impact on his research—and his legacy. His wife was a heavy cigarette smoker and, like millions of other smokers, found it extremely difficult to quit. Murray was curious why, and in the 1960s began investigating. In the Einstein laboratory a contraption with tubes was developed to deliver cigarette smoke to monkeys, which, just like, humans, became addicted. In 1970 he published an influential paper declaring that smoking was an addiction and nicotine a prime factor.

In 1972 he moved to UCLA, where in 1979 Jed Rose joined his team as a postdoctoral researcher at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center. Rose, now director of the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, says that Murray condensed his research quest to one simple question and repeated it endlessly to his team: “Why do people smoke?”

Rose and Siegel both say that Murray’s style was Socratic. He would ask questions but not suggest many answers. He had a remarkable curiosity and created an environment in which ideas could thrive, attracting highly talented people to work in his laboratory.

The idea for the nicotine patch came in 1981 from Rose’s brother, Dan, a medical doctor who happened one day to mention research on the transdermal administration of other medicines. Rose discussed the idea of a nicotine patch with Murray, who was intrigued and gave the go ahead. Rose began first by smearing minute quantities of nicotine on his own forearm, gradually increasing the dose, finding that about 9 mg would increase his heart rate.

By 1985 the patch was tested on smokers and two major papers had been published by the Rose brothers and Murray. When it was time to file for a patent, a dispute arose between mentor and protege. Jed Rose wanted his brother included in the patent—Murray did not. Jed Rose prevailed and soon thereafter left Murray’s laboratory to set up his own. For a while relationships were very cool between the two men.

The patent was approved in the 1990s. The University of California gets a huge share of the royalties, with the rest divided between the Roses and Murray.

Before Rose moved to North Carolina, he and Murray made peace, and afterwards they would get together regularly during Rose’s trips to Los Angeles. It was impossible not to like the man, says Rose, because he had had a fabulous sense of humour that was subtle and self-deprecating and very charming. For example, when asked what it was like to do LSD, Murray responded: “I did not feel much different.”

Murray leaves his wife, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at UCLA, two sons, and three grandchildren. Robert Jarvik, developer of the first artificial heart transplanted into a human being, is his nephew.