Dr. William Catterall (1947–2024)
Dr. William Catterall was a very distinguished member of ASPET. He joined in 1980 and served as Editor and Editorial Board Member of Molecular Pharmacology. Dr. Catterall was also a longstanding member of ASPET’s Board of Publication Trustees, and a founding member
of the ASPET Division for Molecular Pharmacology. In recognition of his service and contributions to science, he received the 2016 Robert R. Ruffolo Career Achievement Award in Pharmacology and was inducted into the inaugural class of ASPET Fellows in 2019, among many other honors.
Dr. Catterall was a professor and former chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. In 1968 he earned a B.A. degree in chemistry from Brown University and in 1972 earned his PhD in physiological chemistry from Johns Hopkins University.
He was considered a leading researcher in the study of electrical signals in living cells and is credited for discovering the voltage-gated sodium channel and calcium channels. Dr. Catterall studies these channels at the molecular and atomic levels with other leading scientists. His work on ion channels was important in improving the understanding of the way certain drugs acted as therapeutics for high blood pressure, autism, heart rhythm, epilepsy and other conditions related to faulty electrical signaling.
Image credit: UW Medicine
