Solomon Snyder, Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry, has been at the helm of the Department of Neuroscience since its founding in 1980. On Friday night, the School of Medicine commemorated his 25th anniversary as director and paid tribute to him during a gala dinner hosted by the departments of Neurology, Neuroscience, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Snyder is expected to step down from the directorship this year (he will remain as a full-time faculty member and continue to head his research lab), and the evening allowed friends and colleagues to celebrate his accomplishments as a researcher, as well as his legacy in helping build the Department of Neuroscience into a world-renowned program.

"Like many other Hopkins faculty members, Sol Snyder has given the gift of his creative research discoveries," President William R. Brody said. "The originality, diversity and scope of Sol's discoveries are legendary. They exceed those of possibly any other neuroscientist in the past half-century. Sol has been at Hopkins for 40 years now, and we all stand in awe of what he has achieved."

In an interview last week with The Baltimore Sun, Snyder disclosed that he had, over the years, made a number of large gifts to the department in the form of stocks and a charitable remainder trust; in addition, he said, reserve funds he has accumulated from grants and gifts he has raised will also be provided to the department.

At the event, Edward Miller, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, announced that the Department of Neuroscience will be renamed in recognition of Snyder's lifetime of achievement at Johns Hopkins and his extraordinary generosity. "We want to make sure that the scope and originality and significance of Sol's many contributions to Johns Hopkins and to the field of neuroscience will always be recognized," Miller said. "It is my great pleasure and honor to announce that henceforth these tremendous research advances will come from the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine."

The event followed a daylong symposium titled Discovery of Hope: From the Molecule to the Mind, A Celebration of Brain Science at Johns Hopkins. Prominent neuroscientists, including two Nobel laureates, honored Hopkins' long history of contributions to understanding the brain and presented their most recent findings on topics such as understanding smell, vision, learning and memory, decision making, and balance-eroding diseases.

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