[3] It was also during his McGill years that Kopin met his wife Rita in an organic chemistry class they took together; they married on June 8, 1952.
When he was informed in his second year there that he was to be drafted, he found a government post with the United States Public Health Service, where he worked as a statistician on a tuberculosis research team, before transferring to the National Institute of Mental Health, where he worked under Seymour Kety.
[5] In 1968, Kety left NIMH for Harvard; Axelrod did not want to take on administrative responsibilities, and so Kopin took over the position of lab chief.
[7] In 1984, Kopin moved from the NIMH to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to become scientific director of the Division of Intramural Research at the invitation of Murray Goldstein.
At NIMH, he came up with the false neurotransmitter theory to explain the action of drugs such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and studied the relationship between the neurotoxin MPTP and Parkinson's disease.