Thomas Arthur Ban, 1929-2022, by Edward Shorter

Hanfried Helmchen Comment

Dear Professor Shorter,

In your short obituary (February 2, 2022) of Professor Thomas Ban you mention that “In 1971 he became the inaugural director the Division of Psychopharmacology at McGill, which was the first university division of its kind in this new field.”

I do not doubt that you as a historian will be interested to hear that already in 1.11.1967 the Institute of Neuropsychopharmacology at the Psychiatric and Neurologic Hospital of the Free University of Berlin was founded and directed since by Professor Helmut Coper. It emerged from the research unit that had been inaugurated by Professor Hanns Hippius in 1952. In Germany this was the first institutionalization of the new field of neuropsychopharmacology at all and particularly in a clinical context.

February 9, 2023