John Garthwaite obituary

John Garthwaite was professor of experimental neuroscience at University College London from 1996 to 2014 Photograph: none

My friend and former colleague John Garthwaite, who has died aged 76, was a neuroscientist who helped to transform our understanding of how brain cells communicate with each other.

In the 1980s, while working at Liverpool University, John overturned the previous belief that cells communicate only at direct contact points (synapses) by showing that the brain also uses nitric oxide gas as a chemical messenger.