John Wolstencroft was an eminent neuropharmacologist and Professor of Physiology at the University of Birmingham from 1970 until his death. After graduating from Cambridge with a first in Natural Sciences in 1947, he stayed there to conduct his doctoral research into the chemical control of breathing on a Medical Research Council (MRC) studentship. In 1951 he was appointed Lecturer in Physiology at Leeds University, where he published a series of papers with colleagues on the influence of the orbital cortex on the brain stem, and on brain stem-mediated cardiovascular and respiratory responses to changes in blood temperature. Throughout his decade at Leeds, he was largely responsible for administering and teaching the one-year physiology course for pharmacology and biochemistry students.

Inspired by visits to other laboratories, including that of Giuseppe Moruzzi in Pisa, Wolstencroft became interested in single neuron research techniques and moved to the MRC’s Neuropharmacology Research Unit at Birmingham in 1962. Collaborating with the Unit’s director, Philip Bradley, he conducted pioneering iontophoretic studies on the neurotransmitter actions of acetylcholine and noradrenaline in the brain stem, and the drugs that influence them.  He trained several researchers from the UK and abroad in the new experimental techniques before transferring to the University’s Department of Physiology as senior lecturer under Professor Sidney Hilton (1967).

This move coincided with Patrick Wall’s return to the UK from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the beginnings of the Brain Research Association (BRA) as it emerged from the informal London Black Horse Group of neuroscientists. Wolstencroft was closely involved in the early development of BRA, later serving as its treasurer (1974-77) and Chairman (1977-80) and, in 1970, he was appointed Professor at Birmingham.

After a brief research diversion into the potential excitatory action of amino acids in the thalamus, his investigations turned to the possible role of peptides as specific CNS neurotransmitters, including the newly-discovered enkephalins. He published extensively on pain, analgesia and neurotransmitters in the brain stem raphe nucleus with his then research fellows, Thelma Lovick and David West. By doing so, they established the important function of the nucleus in motor control, potentially suppressing noxious inputs during the execution of motor tasks.

Wolstencroft’s research attracted funding from the MRC and the Wellcome Trust and he published extensively in the Journal of Physiology and elsewhere. At the time of his premature death, he was starting to explore the role of peptide neurotransmitters in sleep. His first major paper on this subject, an iontophoretic study of piperidine’s actions as a putative sleep factor, was published posthumously.

At Birmingham, Wolstencroft sat on committees responsible for allocating research funds, chairing the Faculty of Medicine’s Scientific Project Committee. He was on the editorial board of the journal ‘Neuropharmacology’ for a decade and acted as advisor to several  universities and national institutions on research appointments and grant applications.

Married three times – most recently to Hisako Ikeda, the distinguished visual neurophysiologist – he enjoyed wine, art and gardening. After his death, family and colleagues established the Wolstencroft lecture in 1986. Now administered by the British Neuroscience Association, the lectureship allows an outstanding neuroscientist to present major advances in the field at the Association’s biennial national meeting.