Peter B. Dews (1922–2012)

![Graphic][1] Peter B. Dews is generally regarded as the ‘father’ of behavioural pharmacology and is especially famous for his early interactions with B. F. Skinner and the introduction of quantitative measurement to the discipline in the 1950s. He was British, being born in Yorkshire, and undertook early medical training at the University of Leeds. He worked under well-known pharmacologists in the UK such as Bain (Leeds), Burn (Oxford) and Gaddum (Manchester) before moving to the US on a Burroughs-Wellcome research fellowship to their facility in New York City where he produced his first major (and most cited) paper (Dews, 1953) on effects of amphetamine, nicotine, cocaine and other drugs on motor activity in mice. He then obtained a PhD at the University of Minnesota and worked at the Mayo Clinic, where he gained his tremendous expertise in statistics. His career took a major step forwards when he moved to Otto Krayer's Department at Harvard, at which point his academic globe-trotting ceased and he spent the rest of his career developing what was to become an eminent laboratory there under his overall direction. His most influential visits to the experimental psychology laboratories at Harvard of Skinner and C. B. Ferster led to the invention of a new paradigm in behavioural pharmacology, which depended on the use of objectively measuring the patterning of operant behaviour over time, … (Email: twr2{at}cam.ac.uk) [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif