Betty Mack Twarog (August 28, 1927 – February 6, 2013) was an American biochemist who was the first to find serotonin in mammalian brain.

Life and career

Betty M Twarog was born on August 28, 1927, in New York City.^[1] She attended Swarthmore College from 1944 to 1948, focusing on mathematics. While studying for an M.Sc. at Tufts College she heard a lecture on mollusc muscle neurology and in 1949 enrolled under John Welsh in the PhD program at Harvard to study this area.^[2] By 1952 she had submitted a paper showing that serotonin had a role as a neurotransmitter in mussels. ^[3] In autumn 1952 Twarog moved for family reasons to the Kent State University area, and chose the Cleveland Clinic as a place to continue her study of her hypothesis that invertebrate neurotransmitters would also be found in mammals.^[2] Although her supporter there, Irvine Page did not believe serotonin would be found in the brain, he nevertheless gave Twarog a laboratory and technician. By June 1953 a paper was submitted announcing the isolation of serotonin in mammalian brain. ^[4]

Twarog left the Cleveland Clinic in 1954 and continued to work on invertebrate smooth muscle at Tufts, Harvard and SUNY at Stony Brook.^[2] In later years, at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, she worked on how shellfish evade phytoplankton poisons.^[2]

Twarog died on February 6, 2013, at the age of 85 in Damariscotta, Maine.^[5]

Impact in science and medicine

Twarog's isolation of serotonin in brain established its potential as a neurotransmitter and thus a modulator of brain action. Her discovery was an essential precursor to the creation in 1978 of the antidepressant SSRI medicines such as fluoxetine and sertraline.