Joseph Murdoch Ritchie (June 10, 1925 – July 9, 2008)[1] was a Scottish born American biophysicist and a professor at Yale University.
[2] He joined the faculty at Yale[3] in pharmacology in 1968, and later served as chairman of the department and as director of the division of biological sciences (1975–1978).
According to his nomination citation "Ritchie's early work was concerned with the factors affecting the onset and duration of the active state in striated muscle, and with other aspects of the dynamics of muscular contraction.
His most recent work on the specific and non-specific binding of tetrodotoxin has provided new information about the density of sodium channels in various types of nerve."
[4] Ritchie is known for asking the Central Intelligence Agency in 1975 to share its supply of saxitoxin[5] (which were used in suicide pills) with scientists for research and his work in neuroscience.