Profile – Professor Sir John Hardy, University College London

Professor Sir John Hardy

Name:

Professor Sir John Hardy

Job Title:

Professor and UK DRI Group Leader.

Place of work / study:

UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurolgy

Area of Research:

Neurogeneticist in the field of neurodegenerative diseases

How is your research funded:

Grants from various charities/enterprise’s.

Tell us a little about yourself:

Sir John is a human geneticist and molecular biologist at the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies at University College London.

Sir John attended St Ambrose College in the late 1960s, where his interest in biochemistry was encouraged by his Biology teacher, Mrs Cox. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Leeds in 1976 and his PhD from Imperial College London in 1981 for research on dopamine and amino acid neuropharmacology.

Following his PhD, Sir John did postdoctoral research at the MRC Neuropathogenesis Unit in Newcastle upon Tyne, England and then further postdoctoral work at the Swedish Brain Bank in Umeå, Sweden where he started to work on Alzheimer’s disease.

He became Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at St. Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College London in 1985 and initiated genetic studies of Alzheimer’s disease. He became Associate Professor in 1989 and then took the Pfeiffer Endowed Chair of Alzheimer’s Research at the University of South Florida, in Tampa in 1992. In 1996 he moved to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, as Consultant and Professor of Neuroscience.

He became Chair of Neuroscience in 2000 and moved to National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland, as Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics in 2001. In 2007 he took up the Chair of Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease at the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies, University College London.

In November 2015, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize, and in 2018, Sir John, along with Christian Haass, Bart De Strooper and Michel Goedert, received the Brain Prize for “groundbreaking research on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer’s disease.”  He was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to “human health in improving our understanding of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases”.

In 1991, Sir John’s team uncovered the first mutation directly implicated in Alzheimer’s disease leading to the formulation of the highly influential ‘amyloid-cascade’ hypothesis.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself:

I enjoy trying street food all around the world.

Why did you choose to work in dementia:

I always wanted to work on the brain.

What single piece of advice would you give to an early career researcher?

Stephen Hawkings Brief answers to the big questions – yes recommend

What book are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy. Yes; a beautifully written description of the challenges of being a new parent.

Can we find you on Twitter & Instagram?

No Sorry