Ferid Murad (born September 14, 1936) is an American physician and pharmacologist, and
a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
== Early life == He was born in Whiting, Indiana to Jabir Murat
Ejupi, an Albanian immigrant from Gostivar, Macedonia, and Henrietta Bowman, an American
Christian.
Ferid Murad was raised as a Christian.
== Adult life == He is married to Carol A. Murad with whom
he has five children and nine grandchildren.
He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the pre-med program at DePauw University
in 1958, and MD and pharmacology Ph.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University in 1965.
He was an early graduate of the first explicit MD/PhD program which would later lead to the
development of the prestigious Medical Scientist Training Program.
He was an Intern in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (1965–66), Resident in
Internal Medicine (1966–67), Clinical Associate and Senior Assistant Surgeon, Public Health
Service, National Heart and Lung Institute (1967–69) and Senior Staff Fellow there
from 1969-70.
He then joined the University of Virginia, where he was made associate professor, Depts.
of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology, School of Medicine in 1970, before becoming a full
Professor in 1975.
From 1971-81 he was Director, Clinical Research Center, UVA School of Medicine and Director,
Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Dept. of Internal Medicine, UVA School of Medicine
(1973–81).
Murad moved to Stanford University in 1981 where he was Chief of Medicine at the Palo
Alto VA Medical Center (1981–86), Associate Chairman, Dept. of Medicine, Stanford University
(1984–86), and Acting Chairman, Dept. of Medicine and Acting Division Chief, Division
of Respiratory Medicine from 1986-88.
In 1988 he was the American Heart Association, Ciba Award Recipient.
Murad left his tenure at Stanford in 1988 for a position at Abbott Laboratories, where
he served as a Vice President of Pharmaceutical Discovery until founding his own biotechnology
company, the Molecular Geriatrics Corporation, in 1993.
Murad went back to academics and joined the University of Texas Medical School at Houston
to create a new department of integrative biology, pharmacology, and physiology in 1997.
There, he was the chairman of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, Professor and Director
Emeritus of The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of
Human Disease, John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Physiology and Medicine, Deputy director
of The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, and later a Professor at the Brown
Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine.
In April 2011, he moved to the George Washington University as a Professor in the Department
of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.Murad's key research demonstrated that nitroglycerin
and related drugs worked by releasing nitric oxide into the body, which relaxed smooth
muscle by elevating intracellular cyclic GMP.
The missing steps in the signaling process were filled in by Robert F. Furchgott and
Louis J. Ignarro of UCLA, for which the three shared the 1998 Nobel Prize (and for which
Murad and Furchgott received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1996).
He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences among other notable societies.
In 2015, Murad signed the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change on the final day of
the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
The declaration was signed by a total of 76 Nobel Laureates and handed to then-President
of the French Republic, François Hollande, as part of the successful COP21 climate summit
in Paris.
== See also == List of Case Western people
== References ==
== External links == Ferid Murad – Autobiography.
Nobel Foundation.
Nobel Laureates 1998