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The influential and pioneering psychiatric researcher Professor Timothy Crow OBE, who was a member of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford, has died at the age of 86.

Professor Timothy Crow

Professor Crow’s research focused on the origins and causes of schizophrenia, hypothesising that the illness was associated with humans’ unique capacity for language and arose relatively recently in human evolution. He also sought to classify the symptoms of the disease, later introducing the concept of two distinct syndromes of schizophrenia.

He joined the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford in 1995, becoming Professor of Psychiatry three years later. He was the inaugural Honorary Director of the Prince of Wales International Centre for SANE Research which opened in 2003 at the Warneford Hospital site in Oxford.

Professor Clare Mackay, who came to Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher working in Professor Crow’s team, said:

I would like to pay tribute to Tim’s generosity as a supervisor. He taught me a lot about psychosis, and much more about dedication and courage in a scientific career.”

Professor Crow was born in London in 1938. He studied at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine before taking his PhD at the University of Aberdeen.  

After a year lecturing at the University of Manchester, Professor Crow became head of the division of psychiatry at Northwick Park Hospital, Middlesex, in 1974.

In 1981 he was awarded the Lieber Prize for schizophrenia research and a decade later was a joint winner of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry’s research prize. He was made OBE in 2018.

Professor Belinda Lennox, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford, said:

Timothy Crow was a hugely important figure not only in the Department of Psychiatry here at Oxford, where he worked for many years, but in the field of psychiatry in general.

His pioneering work on schizophrenia, dedicated to identifying causes of the illness was highly influential and has increased public awareness of the illness. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.”

Marjorie Wallace CBE, founder and chief executive of SANE, said: “I worked closely with Professor Tim Crow, and indeed as a pioneer of schizophrenia research he was one of the key figures who inspired me to found the charity. He subsequently became the scientific director at our research centre in Oxford and for over two decades we funded some of his research.

“On the slopes of Davos or other ski resorts where he held his biennial winter workshops on schizophrenia, he could be a charming companion (neither of us could actually ski!). I also witnessed and wrote about a side to him his colleagues and opponents may not have seen – the insight and compassion that he gave to patients and their families.

“As one of the relatively few neuroscientists with new and imaginative ideas about the often-neglected challenge of psychotic illness, he will remain an important figure in the history of psychiatry.”

Professor Crow died on November 10 2024, leaving his wife Julie, son Oliver and daughter Louise, and his siblings Simon and Joanna.