In Memory of Alec Coppen (1923 -2019) 

by Thomas A. Ban

       Alec Coppen, a member of INHN, passed away in London on March 15, 2019.

       Born in London on January 29, 1923, Alec qualified in medicine after army service during the Second World War and subsequently entered psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. He began his pioneering research in the biology of affective disorders in the late 1950s.

       In his autobiographic essay entitled “Early Days in Biological Psychiatry,” he gives a brief account of the story of this research. The story, reproduced here, was first published in 1998 by Animula, in Budapest, in the Rise of Psychopharmacology and the Story of CINP on pages from 276 to 280.  “The Rise” was the first of a four-volume series The History of Psychopharmacology  and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography, edited by Thomas A. Ban, David Healy and Edward Shorter.

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September 5, 2019