Davies received his BSc (Hons., 1st class) and PhD, both in biochemistry, from the University of Leeds in 1971 and 1974, respectively.
He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, before joining the staff of the Medical Research Council Brain Metabolism Unit in Edinburgh in 1974, where he began his research on Alzheimer's disease.
His early work was in the development of the currently approved drugs for Alzheimer's disease: Aricept, Exelon and Razodyne.
[4] They put a viral oncogene into differentiated neurons and watched as pathological events progressed.
[5] The overall goal of Davies' research was to develop treatments to slow or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease.