Perspectives on the history and scientific contributions of Gerhard Levy

Gerhard Levy (Fig. 1) was born February 12, 1928 in Wollin, Germany, and obtained his early education in China. An oral history of his childhood experiences in Nazi Germany and China is available online (http://collections. ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511804). Gary attended the University of California at San Francisco earning the BS in Pharmacy in 1955 and PharmD in 1958. Nearly his entire career was spent at the University of Buffalo (UB) having joined as Assistant Professor of Pharmacy in 1958 and retiring as University Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutics in 2000. His own personal perspectives on his career and the development of pharmacodynamics as a pharmaceutical science were published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy in 2006 [1]. Gary accumulated a lengthy list of national and international professional awards including the Høst Madsen Medal from the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) in 1978, the Oscar Hunter Award in Experimental Therapeutics in 1982 from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Volwiler Award in 1982 from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the Takeru Higuchi Research Prize in 1983 from the American Pharmaceutical Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1994 from the FIP, plus 20 honorary lectureships at various universities and venues and 6 Doctor Honoris Causae Awards. He fondly describes the impressive ceremony with a massive cannon discharge when his honorary doctorate was bestowed in Uppsala, Sweden in 1975. We have his cannon shell, top hat, and certificate on display in our building. His proceeds from the Higuchi Prize were deposited into a university account and have funded the Buffalo Pharmaceutics Scholar Award, which to date has recognized 32 outstanding students in the Buffalo PhD program. Their names and photographs are displayed in our primary graduate classroom, The Gerhard Levy Seminar Room (Kapoor 443). Gary was also the first pharmacist named to the prestigious Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, in 1980. We host the annual Gerhard Levy Distinguished Lectureship each fall, with several of the recipients contributing their comments in this article.