Researcher profile

david nutt

David Nutt MBBCHir (Cantab) DM (Oxon) FRCP FRCPsych FBPhS FMedSci DLaws (hon cause Bath) is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Director of the Centre for Psychedelic Research in the Division of Psychiatry, Dept of Brain Science, Imperial College London. After 11+ entry to Bristol Grammar he won an Open Scholarship to Downing College Cambridge completing his clinical training at Guy's Hospital London. After a period in neurology to MRCP he moved to Oxford to a research position in psychiatry at the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Unit where he obtained his DM. On completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. He returned to England in 1988 to set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology. After a period as head of Psychiatry and then Dean of Clinical Medicine in 2009 he moved to Imperial College London where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging, especially Positron Emission Tomography and fMRI in addictions and depressive disorders. David has held a number of significant scientific leadership positions – including Presidencies of the European Brain Council, the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology as well as Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, of Psychiatrists the Academy of Medical Sciences and British Pharmacological Society. He is also the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. He edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for thirty years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 35 books, including three for the general public, ‘Drugs Without the Hot Air’ (which won the Transmission book prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas), “Brain and Mind Made Simple”, and his autobiography ‘Nutt Uncut’. His latest book is one for the general public on psychedelics https://tinyurl.com/psychedeeliics v David’s research has been published in many of the leading journals including Nature, Cell, PNAS, Lancet, JAMA psychiatry and the New England Journal of Medicine. These papers define his many landmark contributions to psychopharmacology including GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction. Most recently he has focused on the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelic drugs with resulting papers in PNAS, Lancet Psychiatry and the first ever comparison of a psychedelic with an SSRI was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994 . In 2023 Scholar GPs ranked him the leading psychopharmacologist in the world https://scholargps.com/scholars/73699337611906/david-j-nu He is currently Chair of Drug Science (previously the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) a charity that tells the truth about drugs and with which he runs a popular podcast on matters of drug science and policy https://www.drugscience.org.uk/latest/blogs/drugsciencepodcast/. He broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television; highlights include being a subject for many BBC programmes including The Life Scientific, Hard Talk, On the Ropes, A Good Read and Private Passions. His research has been featured in many tv programmes eg the BBC Horizon and the Channel 4 documentaries Ecstasy and Cannabis-live. His research has been the subject of the films Magicmedicine https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8661404/ The psychedelic drug trial https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w7bq/the-psychedelic-drug-trial and the play ‘All you need is LSD’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wNRzUAIPY He is much in demand for public affairs programs on therapeutic as well as illicit drugs, their harms and their classification and the relationship between scientists and government. He also lecturers widely to the public as well as to the scientific and medical communities, e.g. at the Cheltenham Science and How the Light Gets In Festivals, Café Scientifiques and Skeptics in the Pub. In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine voted him one of the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist in the list. In 2013 he was awarded the Nature/Sense about Science John Maddox prize for Standing up for Science.