Pierre J. Magistretti (born 1952 in Milan, Italy) is an Italian and Swiss neuroscientist and physician.

Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and enrolled in a graduate program for neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.

In 1982, he received his PhD for a thesis on Vasoactive Intestinal Polypeptide: A Regulator of Cellular Homeostasis in Cerebral Cortex co-supervised by William Shoemaker.

[6] Until 1987 he was Maître Assistant (postdoctoral researcher) at University of Geneva's department of pharmacology and worked on the synergistic interactions between vasoactive intestinal peptide and norepinephrine in forming cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP).

[17] He is the recipient of the 2016 IPSEN Foundation Prize (together with David Attwell and Marcus Raichle),[18] the 2011 Camillo Golgi Medal Award from the Golgi Foundation,[19] and the 2009 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship from Canadian Psychological Association.