A leader in studying psychoactive drug impact

Hannah Steinberg, who has died aged 95, was one of the first researchers to test systematically how psychoactive drugs affect the mind, helping found the scientific field of psychopharmacology.

In the 1950s a new blockbuster drug, Drinamyl, had been developed. It was a powerful amphetamine and a heavy-duty barbiturate rolled into one, which came in bluish triangular tablets popularly known as purple hearts.

The drug was not tightly controlled, and by the early 1960s had become a popular and widely abused party drug.

Steinberg, a psychologist in the pharmacology department of University College London, was one of the first to realize the brain produces psychoactive substances in response to the ups and downs of life, and argued that the consequences of adding drugs to the mix could not be reliably predicted.

In the late 1950s, with her colleague Ruth Rushton, she set up experiments to test the effects of psychoactive drugs on the behaviour of laboratory animals as well as human guinea pigs.

In theory the barbiturate should have quelled some of the jittery effects of the amphetamine, but to her surprise Steinberg found it accentuated the effect, making rats hyperactive. In other experiments, mice given a similar combination of drugs walked backwards.

She also found that the effect of Drinamyl could depend on the emotional state of the recipient. Rats stressed by changes in their environment responded differently from those that were not.

Eventually Drinamyl was phased out, though Steinberg had no principled objection to the drug, telling a 1997 seminar on drugs in psychiatric medicine that there was a great future in combining drugs, “provided you know what you are doing.”

Steinberg was born in Vienna on March 16, 1924, the only daughter of Michael Steinberg, a lawyer, and his wife, Marie, who ran a wholesale pelt business.

In 1938 they arranged for their daughter to be evacuated to Britain on the Kindertransport. Shortly after, Marie took her own life; her husband fled to Palestine.

Steinberg graduated with a psychology degree in 1948, then earned a PHD on the effects of nitrous oxide on the performance of cognitive tasks.

She became the first psychologist on the staff of the UCL pharmacology department and in 1970 one of the first professors of psychopharmacology in the world. Her laboratory became a leading centre for the study of drug-taking behaviour and addiction.

In the 1980s, with her colleague and partner Elizabeth Sykes, she studied the effects of exercise on mental health, publishing a number of studies.

Elizabeth Sykes died in 2011.