He was a student at the École normale supérieure from 1955 to 1959 and passed the Agrégation of biology in his final year, a highly competitive postgraduate examination which serves as a national ranking of students. Then he devoted his thesis to a problem of organization of nerves. He became a Doctor of Science in 1965.
Career
Philippe Ascher is interested in the ionic mechanisms associated with the action of neurotransmitters. On Aplysian neurons, he studied the inhibitory and excitatory effects of dopamine, and the rapid excitatory actions of acetylcholine. In the study of mammalian neurons, he participated in the characterization of L-glutamate receptors, particularly those activated by N-methyl-D-aspartic acid. He discovered the role of Mg ions in the functioning of these receptors, and the modulating role of glycine. He then studied the role of NMDA receptors in the plasticity of cerebellar synapses. In 1965 he met a post-doctoral student named JacSue Keohe, whom he married in 1967 and with whom he had a scientific collaboration throughout his career. In 1971 at the École normale supérieure, he founded the Neurobiology Laboratory, of which he was director until 2001. Then in 1992, still at the ENS, he succeeded Pierre Joliot as head of the Biology Department. In 1992 he won the Richard Lounsbery Award jointly with Henri Korn for "their discoveries of the mechanisms of synaptic transmission. Philippe Asher furthered knowledge regarding the properties of glutamate receptors which play an important role in trials, and Henri Korn brought to light the elementary liberation of neurotransmitter in quanta form in the central nervous system of vertebrates." His current research focuses on a synapse in the spinal cord that uses both acetylcholine and glutamate. In 2003, having reached official retirement age with his wife JacSue, he joined Alain Marty who heads the Laboratory of Cerebral Physiology at the University of Paris-Descartes. Since 2019, he has been Professor Emeritus at the SPPIN laboratory of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, also at the University of Paris-Descartes.
