Dr. Kenneth E. Moore
(1934–2024)
Dr. Moore served as president of ASPET in 1998. Dr. Moore was honored with ASPET’s Torald Sollman award in 2005, and in 2019, he was named to the inaugural class of ASPET Fellows. In addition to president, he served ASPET as secretary-treasurer on the finance committee and as Board Chair of the Publications Committee (formerly the Publications Trustees).
In 1966, Dr. Moore was among the first professors in Michigan State University’s (MSU) Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and later served as its chair for 14 years. As professor emeritus, he continued to teach at MSU until his retirement in 2001. He began his academic career as an associate professor in the medical school at Dartmouth College. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pharmacy from the University of Alberta and his PhD in pharmacology from the University of Michigan.
He was among the first researchers to identify the neurotransmitter dopamine. His research on brain catecholamine systems has included pioneering studies on the development of denervation super sensitivity in the central nervous system and on the biochemical mechanisms of action of psychomotor stimulants such as amphetamine.
His work has focused on hypothalamic dopamine systems, characterizing the responses of these neurons to pharmacological, endocrinological and environmental manipulations. Using neurochemical methods that he and his colleagues developed or refined, Dr. Moore demonstrated that hypothalamic dopaminergic neurons differ in many fundamental ways from the “classic” nigrostriatal and mesolimbic dopaminergic neurons.
