Professor Grossman will deliver the lecture on 3rd May during the society’s annual meeting, in Poland. The prize, worth €12,000 and sponsored by Ipsen, is the first of its kind in Europe and is awarded to established researchers in the field of neuroendocrinology. It is named in honour of Oxford University’s Professor Geoffrey Harris, one of the leading pioneers of neuroendocrinology.
Professor Grossman commented: "I am really honoured to have been awarded this prize, celebrating research into the field neuroendocrinology which includes studies of disorders of the hypothalamus and pituitary. These areas of the brain and endocrine system respectively reveal the intimate connections between 'brain, mind and body', and have fascinated me since I was an undergraduate in Psychology. More recently, I have been involved in research to understand the development of pituitary tumours, which are helping to identify the earliest stages of tumorigenesis. I am especially delighted that I now work at a university where Geoffrey Harris made his ground-breaking researches into the connections between brain and hormones, in the Department of Human Anatomy in South Parks Road (which later joined the Laboratory of Physiology to form the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics); if it were not for his premature death, it is highly likely he would have gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in association with Andrew Schally and Roget Guillemin who sequenced the first hypothalamic hormones. At the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, our in-patient ward is named Geoffrey Harris in his honour."