MAY/JUNE 2008
Volume 14 - No. 2

SRNT Newsletter

MAY/JUNE 2008, Volume 14, Number 2

In Rememberance: The Life of Murray Jarvik

by Richard Olmstead

Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D., recently died on May 8 at his home in Santa Monica, California. Murray was a pioneer in nicotine dependence research and one of the founding members of SRNT. Although Murray was well known to many members, his recent health issues and retirement from academia reduced his involvement the organization. Thus, some members may know only of Murray Jarvik as a name attached to SRNT's Young Investigator Award. The history of the man behind the name is a story of great personal and scientific achievement.

Murray was born in New York City in 1923. The Great Depression soon arrived and this period of extreme economic turmoil would color Murray's thinking for the rest of his life. Most notably, Murray would accumulate a huge library of books, both scientific and general interest and a trove of scientific equipment that filled his lab storage space. Intellectually, his early experiences may have brought parsimony to his view of science as well. He preferred direct research questions and direct answers. He was not fond of complex projects or large-scale data collection. He preferred looking for phenomena that could be seen within a small sample of subjects.

Murray's interest in science began in high school. One of his earliest successes came then when he and a classmate, Ernest Schwarz, built a working model of an iron lung and won first prize in the Westinghouse Science competition. This also presaged Murray's lifelong interest in gadgets and new technologies. While he was attending college, he had a job working with many renowned scientists using advanced technologies at the Rockefeller Institute. Subsequently, he would try his hand at several inventions of his own. One of his more interesting, if less successful, ideas was a patented design for a portable escalator.

After college, Murray moved west to the UCLA Psychology Department for graduate work, and subsequently transferred to UC Berkeley to work under Edward Tolman. This led him to focus on the study of learning and memory. Murray's doctorate work was put on hold for him to attend medical school at UCSF but he soon earned both degrees.

Following medical school, Murray worked at the Yerkes Laboratory in Florida. It was here that he serendipitously witnessed a monkey that would smoke cigarettes. A Fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York followed. It was here where Murray became one of the pre-eminent researchers studying a newly discovered substance: LSD. Though Murray's interest in LSD was purely scientific, a mutual associate introduced Timothy Leary to the drug with historical ramifications for the popular culture.

LSD research also pivoted Murray into the emerging field of psychopharmacology in the mid-1950's and to a professorial position at the newly created Albert Einstein School of Medicine. It was here that Murray established himself as a premier researcher on effects of drugs on learning and behavior. If his career had ended at this point, his contributions to the field would have been impressive by all common metrics. As editor-in-chief of a major journal for many years, and author of a textbook chapter read by almost every medical student for decades, Jarvik was often called the "dean of psychopharmacology" by students and colleagues alike.

Yet, Murray's interests in the mid-1960s turned toward tobacco smoking. This was partly due to funding opportunities and partly due to concerns about people close to him who smoked; the historic US Surgeon General's Report on the health risks of smoking was released in 1964. Although Murray continued, initially, to study the effects of other drugs and memory, he eventually shifted his focus to smoking and nicotine addiction almost entirely.

One of the first projects he attempted, spurred by the very memorable observation at Yerkes, was to attempt to get monkeys to smoke. This was partially successful and led to experiments with humans and rats so that by 1970, Murray had collected sufficient data to suggest that nicotine was key in the reinforcement of smoking. His work was included in subsequent Surgeon General Reports on smoking and nicotine addiction. Murray left Albert Einstein for a new position and laboratory at UCLA. It was here that Murray trained and collaborated with many persons in the field of smoking and nicotine addiction research who then went on to make their own major contributions. These included Ian Stolerman, Nina Schneider, and Ellen Gritz. With Saul Shiffman, he was one of the first to bring psychometric principals to the measurement of nicotine withdrawal using a questionnaire; the resulting Shiffman-Jarvik Withdrawal Scale was used by many researchers at the time.

Perhaps Murray's most notable achievement was work done with Jed Rose in the 1980's investigating the possibility of delivering nicotine through the skin in sufficient quantities to affect smoking behavior. At first, their approach was quite simple, a basic poultice of nicotine. After much development, they were able to patent the concept of a nicotine transdermal patch which they turned over to UCLA. It soon made it into production as the second FDA-approved pharmacologic treatment for smoking cessation after nicotine gum. With both established efficacy and ease of use, it was highly successful, for several years among the top three most profitable patents for the University of California. Unfortunately, the story was not without some disappointment for Murray. Though it was clear that Murray and Jed did develop their idea independently (also with Jed's physician brother), others did claim that they had done so first and this led to many lawsuits involving the UC and various pharmaceutical companies. This aspect of the "business of science" was one that Murray did not appreciate. Nonetheless, Murray was justifiably proud of the millions of people he has undoubtedly helped to quit smoking; very few scientists have had the opportunity to create such a vast public health benefit.

Though it was now accepted that nicotine was the primary reinforcer, Murray continued to ask `Why do people smoke?' In the last phase of his career, he worked on a number of projects that examined secondary reasons such as menthol, potential cognitive benefits, self-treatment for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, and internal and external cues to smoking. Perhaps to prove his scientific agnosticism in an area that sometimes engendered strong political debates on the "evils" of drug dependency, Murray also penned an article discussing the beneficial effects of nicotine. Among his more than 300 publications, one of his personal favorites was a simple little study that looked at the "favorite cigarette of the day" in part because he liked the title, an example of Murray's impish side. A much faded "Nothing is simple" banner was a centerpiece to his office and represented a dichotomy in his feelings about science. While many a straight-forward and simple research design were devised in the presence of that banner, Murray always knew that there would be complications and complexities, that more questions would be created than answered at each step.

Murray suffered from several serious medical conditions throughout his life. At age 12, his heart was damaged by rheumatic fever; the resulting severe aortic insufficiency reduced his life expectancy at the time to age 33 (a fact he discovered at age 20 in reading up on the disease). At age 28, Murray was struck by bulbar polio which, fortunately, only impaired his swallowing and voice. In 1991, Murray was found to have lung cancer despite being a life-long non-smoker; it was caught early and surgery was effective. In the late 1990's, Murray was forced to use a feeding tube for more than a year after complications from surgery repairing his implanted heart valve. He then developed congestive heart failure, though was able to manage it for many years until a sudden worsening led to his death. "He loved life with a fierce passion that allowed him to survive well beyond the expectations of everyone […]" said his son, Jeffrey. Moreover, he learned to accept limitations of his health with humor. He would tell the story of being alone and paralyzed by polio and needing to be rescued by colleagues as an amusing anecdote and he delighted in showing off the process of using the feeding tube to anyone over for a visit.

While Murray undoubtedly developed into a great scientific mind, it is very illustrative to read something Murray wrote when he was still a teen. In 1941, in response to a discussion about science and religion with Ernest Schwartz, Murray wrote in a letter (Some of this was read by his son at his memorial service):

"I feel very flattered that you consider me scientifically-minded. I only wish I were, for to my mind scientific thinking means clear, logical thinking as opposed to hazy, dreamy thinking that begins nowhere and ends nowhere. Since I derive aesthetic pleasure from many things, my thinking is necessarily hazy sometimes."

"Can you solve social problems without using […] philosophy? Probably. You can build a house without knowing geometry. But as you cannot build a very good house without applying geometry so you cannot solve social problems without applying philosophy."

"A scientist is a philosopher since he wants to know as much as he possibly can. He knows he will never know everything but this does not bother him since he also knows that he can know more than he does at the present."

"I don't think that knowledge alone is enough. It must be applied to the happiness of mankind. Let me define what I consider Good and Evil. Perfect Good is that which helps all of mankind to achieve happiness without hurting any person. Perfect Evil is that which hurts all of mankind without helping any person to achieve happiness. You can see now what I would consider a relatively good man."

Based upon Murray's contributions to global public health and the personal effect he had on those close to him in his life, it is clear on which side of this equation he fell.

Murray is survived by his wife of 53 years, Lissy, herself a renowned research scientist and an emeritus professor of psychiatry at UCLA, his sons Laurence (Larry) and Jeffrey (Jerry), and his grandchildren Ella, Leah, and Ethan.

For additional colorful events in Murray's life, please see the 2001 interview in Addiction (v96, pp 1241-52).

UCLA will be holding a memorial service on October 31, 2008. For more information, please contact Richard Olmstead at Richard.Olmstead@ucla.edu

About the Author: Richard Olmstead is an Associate Researcher at UCLA and the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System; he was among the last group of individuals trained in Dr. Jarvik's laboratory and continued to collaborate with him until his retirement.