Background
Woolley, Dilworth Wayne was born on July 20, 1914 in Raymond, Alberta, Canada, (parents American citizens). Son of Andrew Dilworth and Henrietta (Schonfeld) Woolley.
Woolley, Dilworth Wayne was born on July 20, 1914 in Raymond, Alberta, Canada, (parents American citizens). Son of Andrew Dilworth and Henrietta (Schonfeld) Woolley.
Wayne Woolley (as he was known) was a precocious child who finished high school at age 13, and completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Alberta at age 19. He pursued graduate studies in the department of agricultural chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his Doctor of Philosophy in 1939.
His graduate research with Conrad Elvehjem concerned nicotinic acid as a treatment for canine blacktongue, with implications for human pellagra. Woolley spent much of his career at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. His major work focused on serotonin in brain chemistry: how substances such as LSD might affect the action of serotonin, how disorders of serotonin function might be responsible for mental disorders, and how serotonin might play a part in memory and learning.
Though his career was shorter-lived than expected, subsequent work by others has developed many of Woolley"s hypotheses in productive directions.
In 1952 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He served as president of the Institute of Nutrition in 1959.
Woolley was an author on over 200 research papers and book articles in his thirty-year career. Books by Woolley included A Study of Antimetabolites (1952), and The Biochemical Bases of Psychoses (1962).
Member National Academy Sciences, New York Academy of Medicine, Society Biological Chemists, American Institute Nutrition, American Chemical Society, Society American Bacteriologists, Society Experimental Biology and Medicine, Harvey Society, American Society Pharmacology.
Married Janet McCarter, June 24, 1945.