Michael Russell

Michael Russell, aged 77, died 16 July 2009, in Cape Town South Africa.

Obituary by Martin Jarvis,
published in the Guardian.
By the 1960s evidence of the danger of cigarette smoking was clear, but there was little understanding of why people smoked. Michael Russell was one of the pioneers who did most to revolutionize our understanding, whose work  eventually brought recognition that cigarette smoking is a classic drug dependence behaviour, underlaid by nicotine addiction. He was based at Griffith Edwards' Addiction Research Unit, at the Institute of Psychiatry, where he built a research team, most of whom remain in the field. Russell was appointed Professor of Addiction in 1986, and continued at the ARU until 1998.
Photo credits: Martin Jarvis

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