David Nutt

David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Division of Brain Science, Dept of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. 

His research area is psychopharmacology – the study of the effects of drugs on the brain, from the perspectives of both how drug treatments in psychiatry and neurology work, and why people use and become addicted to some drugs such as alcohol. To study the effects of drugs in the brain, he uses state-of-the-art techniques such as brain imaging with PET and fMRI plus EEG and MEG. 

This research output has led to over 500 original research papers and a similar number of reviews and book chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 35 books, including one for the general public, Drugs without the hot air, that won the Transmission Prize in 2014.  

He was previously President of the European Brain Council, the British Association of Psychopharmacology, the British Neuroscience Association and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is currently Founding Chair of DrugScience.org.uk and holds visiting Professorships at the Open University and University of Maastricht.

David broadcasts widely to the general public, both on radio and television. 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. He was awarded the John Maddox Prize from Nature/Sense about Science for standing up for science in 2013, and a degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from the University of Bath in 2017.