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Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., 1936-2023

[Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., and research associate Yu-Chen Lee, Ph.D., work in one of Murad’s labs at the McGovern Medical School. Photo by George Craig. Monday Morning, October 19, 1998. IC 007 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston records, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
Posted on by mattrichardson

By Matt Richardson, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian.

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., Nobel Prize laureate and UTHealth McGovern Medical School faculty member, passed away September 4, 2023 in Menlo Park, California. The McGovern Historical Center is home to the original handwritten notebooks that Dr. Murad used to record his research throughout the 1960s.

Murad came to Houston in 1997 as the inaugural chair of the Department of Integrative Biology, Pharmacology, and Physiology at UTHealth’s McGovern Medical School in Houston. Among other roles, he also served as Director of the Brown Foundation Institute for Molecular Medicine.

Murad was a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work with nitric oxide and cyclic GMP. He was awarded alongside Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro.

Born in Indiana in 1936, Murad graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1958. He later completed an M.D.-Ph.D. program at Western Reserve University in Cleveland and had his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. Following work as a clinical associate in the National Institutes of Health Heart Institute, his career involved stints at the University of Virginia, Stanford, Abbott Laboratories, and the Molecular Geriatrics Corporation.

In addition to the fifteen handwritten notebooks documenting Dr. Murad’s research, his collection at the MHC includes a handful of printed materials from Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford. The MHC’s collection of UT Health McGovern Medical School records (IC 007) contains issues of “Monday Morning” covering the news of Dr. Murad’s Nobel Prize.

[Monday Morning, October 19, 1998. IC 007 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston records, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[Monday Morning, October 19, 1998. IC 007 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston records, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[An archival box containing three of Dr. Ferid Murad's original research notebooks. Notebook 5 is opened to the index. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[An archival box containing three of Dr. Ferid Murad’s original research notebooks. Notebook 5 is opened to the index. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]

[A page from Dr. Ferid Murad's original research notebooks, May 22, 1968. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[A page from Dr. Ferid Murad’s original research notebooks, May 22, 1968. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]

[A page showing handdrawn graphs from Dr. Ferid Murad's original research notebooks, undated. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[A page showing handdrawn graphs from Dr. Ferid Murad’s original research notebooks, undated. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]

[MGH Medical Service Interns, 1965-1966. Murad is in the second row, far right. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]
[MGH Medical Service Interns, 1965-1966. Murad is in the second row, far right. MS 106 Ferid Murad, MD, PhD papers, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]

 

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