Colin Louis Masters MD FAA AO (born 5 Feb 1947 in Perth, Western Australia) is an Australian neuropathologist who researches Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
After positions as visiting scientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Humboldt fellow at Heidelberg University, he returned to Western Australia and Royal Perth Hospital in 1981 as a clinician-scientist.
[3] Masters and his erstwhile colleague from Heidelberg Konrad Beyreuther were the first to characterize the amyloid protein that forms the cerebral plaques observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Down's Syndrome (DS, also known as trisomy 21).
[6] The notion that Aβ causes AD, called the amyloid hypothesis, gained force from genetic studies that traced familial forms of the disease to variations in the APP gene.
[11] In 1997 they were awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, together with James F. Gusella, for contributions to the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.