The integrative healthcare world lost one of its true pioneers with the passing earlier this month of Candace Beebe Pert, PhD.

A pharmacologist by training, Dr. Pert is best known in biomedical circles for seminal collaborations with Dr. Solomon H. Synder toward the discovery of the opiate receptor system in the brain.

To the general public, she was known as the author of the massively popular and influential book, Molecules of Emotion (1997), which translated cutting edge neurobiology into terms understandable to people without scientific training.

Moreover, the book framed the science around questions that ordinary people actually care about: Why do I feel the way I do? What’s the connection between my mind and my body? Do my feelings and thoughts contribute to illness, and can they bring about healing?

Pert, who earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins, and held a variety of positions at the National Institute of Mental Health, was part of a vanguard of neurologists emerging in the 1970s who sought to revolutionize the behavioral sciences through a better understanding of the ways in which consciousness influences physiology—and vice versa. Ultimately, she sought to restore the unity between science and spirituality.

A strong and clear voice for women in biomedical science, at a time when those numbers were few, she was also a tireless advocate for fairness in science—and scientific credit.

Having come of age in the era when “lead investigators” and department heads—almost exclusively male–were the only ones recognized for major discoveries, and usually the sole recipients of any rewards, Dr. Pert pushed for recognition of all scientists involved—including grad students and lab assistants.

Dr. Pert died of cardiac arrest at her home in Potomac, MD. A memorial service will be held on October 27, at 10:00 AM at the Historic Jewish Synagogue, Sixth & I, Washington, DC.