Murray Elias Jarvik (June 1, 1923 – May 8, 2008) was an American psychopharmacologist and academic who was among the first scientists to study d-lysergic acid, the precursor to LSD,[1] and later became the co-inventor of the nicotine patch.
[4] His son Laurence Jarvik made the documentary film Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die about the inaction of the Roosevelt Administration during the time of the Holocaust.
[2] His initial exploration into this field began by studying farmers and farmhands in the American South who harvest tobacco by hand for a living.
[2] However, Jarvik and his colleague, then UCLA postdoctoral fellow Jed Rose, could not get approval to conduct their research into tobacco absorption through the skin on human subjects.
[2] Murray Jarvik died at his home in Santa Monica, California, on May 8, 2008, at the age of 84 from a pulmonary edema from congestive heart failure.