Geoffrey Burnstock AC (1929–2020), neuroscientist, played a key role in the discovery of the molecule ATP as neurotransmitter, with important implications for the treatment of conditions including cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. This research has also led to the drug clopidogrel, marketed since 1997, which is used against stroke and thrombosis. Unable to get into medical school, Burnstock obtained a PhD in Zoology at the University of London in 1957 before working at the medical institute at Mill Hill, and at Oxford and Illinois universities. After meeting his New Zealand-born wife, and attracted to the informality and irreverence of the Australian scientists he met at Oxford, he accepted a position as senior lecturer in Zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1959. He was Professor of Zoology there from 1964 to 1975. During his time in Australia, he made his discoveries about the role of ATP in neurotransmission. In the 1970s Burnstock was the subject of a film called The Smooth Muscle Man. He returned to London in 1975, where he was head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at University College London, and from 1997 to 2017, Director of the Autonomic Neuroscience Institute at the Royal Free Hospital. After moving back to Australia, he was an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne. Elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1971, Burnstock was awarded the Academy’s Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture in 2018. He was awarded the Royal Society Gold Medal in 2000 and made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2018.
