UC San Diego’s Palmer Taylor Awarded France’s Legion of Honour

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Palmer Taylor, PhD, dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, associate vice chancellor for Health Sciences, and Sandra and Monroe Trout Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded the rank of "Chevalier dans l'Ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur" (Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honour) by the President of France, François Hollande. 

The Legion of Honour, established after the French Revolution, is the highest French national decoration, a distinction recognizing eminent personalities, both French and foreign, who have contributed significantly to the development of relationships with France.

“This prestigious honor, and Dr. Taylor’s important work, exemplifies the cooperative international research for which UC San Diego is renowned, and I join in congratulating him on behalf of the university,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. 

Annick Suzor-Weiner, Counsellor for Science and Technology at the Embassy of France in the United States, was a recent visitor to UC San Diego, and recognized Taylor’s achievement: “Palmer Taylor is a world-leading scientist whose commitment to international research has yielded strong and productive collaborations between French and American scientists. He is a great ambassador of the excellent partnerships that exist between France and the United States in the fields of science and technology,” Suzor-Weiner stated.

“Dr. Taylor’s collaboration with the Pasteur Institute and the Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique at Aix-Marseille Université reminds us that scientific research is a unified endeavor which relies on teamwork at the international level,” she added. “It is my role, as the Science Counselor of France in the United States, to encourage cooperative research work between our two countries, which have always been strong allies. It is through shared research objectives that both France and the United States can play a key role in advancing the fields of science and technology, and drive innovation for both their benefit and for that of humanity.”

“UC San Diego Health Sciences is extremely pleased and proud of Dean Taylor for this much-deserved recognition of his many contributions to medical science,” said David A. Brenner, MD, vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine at UC San Diego.

Taylor is the founding dean of Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, which opened in 2002.  He earned his Bachelor of Science and PhD degrees in physical pharmacy from the University of Wisconsin, followed by post-doctoral fellowships with the National Institutes of Health and Cambridge University.

Taylor’s research is related to the structure, recognition capacity, and regulation of expression of proteins governing neurotransmission in junctions between cells called cholinergic synapses.

“This honor is very well deserved not only for your outstanding work on cholinergic systems, and for your exceptional devotion to teaching and training in the pharmaceutical sciences, but also for your generous and creative co-operation and friendship with French scientists, including myself,” said Jean Pierre Changeux, professor of molecular neurobiology at the Collège de France and the Institut Pasteur.