Corneliu E. Giurgea was a Romanian psychologist and chemist.

In 1964, he synthetised Piracetam

Piracetam

Piracetam is a nootropic drug. Piracetam's chemical name is 2-oxo-1-pyrrolidine acetamide; it shares the same 2-oxo-pyrrolidone base structure with 2-oxo-pyrrolidine carboxylic acid . Piracetam is a cyclic derivative of GABA. It is one of the group of racetams...

, which he has described as a nootropic

Nootropic

Nootropics , also referred to as smart drugs, brain steroids, memory enhancers, cognitive enhancers, and intelligence enhancers, are drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that improve mental functions such as cognition, memory, intelligence, motivation, attention, and concentration...

.

Giurgea coined the term nootropic in 1972.

Nootropic characteristics

He stated that nootropic drugs should have the following characteristics:

1. They should enhance learning
   Learning
   Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
   
    and memory
   Memory
   In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
   
   .
2. They should enhance the resistance of learned behaviors/memories to conditions which tend to disrupt them (e.g. electroconvulsive shock, hypoxia
   Hypoxia (medical)
   Hypoxia, or hypoxiation, is a pathological condition in which the body as a whole or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply. Variations in arterial oxygen concentrations can be part of the normal physiology, for example, during strenuous physical exercise...
   
   ).
3. They should protect the brain against various physical or chemical injuries (e.g. barbiturate
   Barbiturate
   Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, as hypnotics, and as anticonvulsants...
   
   s, scopalamine).
4. They should increase the efficacy of the tonic cortical/subcortical control mechanisms.
5. They should lack the usual pharmacology of other psychotropic drugs (e.g. sedation
   Sedation
   Sedation is the reduction of irritability or agitation by administration of sedative drugs, generally to facilitate a medical procedure or diagnostic procedure...
   
   , motor stimulation) and possess very few side effect
   Adverse effect
   In medicine, an adverse effect is a harmful and undesired effect resulting from a medication or other intervention such as surgery.An adverse effect may be termed a "side effect", when judged to be secondary to a main or therapeutic effect. If it results from an unsuitable or incorrect dosage or...
   
   s and extremely low toxicity
   Toxicity
   Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ , such as the liver...
   
   .

(note: section 5. of Giurgea's original definition has been gradually dropped by most researchers.)

Biography

He received a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 from the University of Bucharest

University of Bucharest

The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...

, were he also taught for several years. He continued his research and specialisation at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, under some of Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....

's closest collaborators such as Pyotyr Kupalov. He was then a post-doc at the University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

 and subsequently a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain

Université catholique de Louvain

The Université catholique de Louvain, sometimes known, especially in Belgium, as UCL, is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve and in Brussels...

 and scientific counselor and researcher at the Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB

UCB (company)

UCB is a multinational biopharmaceutical manufacturing company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.- History :UCB was founded on 18 January 1928 by Emmanuel Janssen, a Belgian businessman...

.

Books and articles

• Le Vieillissement Cerebral: Normal Et Reussi, Le Defi Du XXIe Siecle 1993 ISBN 978-2-87009-539-3
• L'heritage De Pavlov: Un Demi-Siecle Apres Sa Mort 1986 ISBN 978-2-87009-279-8
• Fundamentals to a pharmacology of the mind 1981 ISBN 978-0-398-04130-4

• Articles: PubMed Central, Google Scholar.

Quotes

"Man is not going to wait passively for millions of years before evolution offers him a better brain."