Lumír Ondřej Hanuš
Lumír Ondřej Hanuš () is a Czech analytic chemist and leading authority in the field of cannabis research. In 1992, he and William Anthony Devane isolated and first described the structure of anandamide, an endogenous cannabinoid neurotransmitter. Biography Lumír Hanuš was born in 1947 in Olomouc, in what was then Czechoslovakia. He is a distant relative of Czech chemist Josef Hanuš (1872–1955). Academic career In 1966, Hanuš began studying at the Faculty of Science of Palacký University Olomouc. In 1970, professor Zdeněk Krejčí of the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology (where the anti-bacterial effects of cannabis were described in 1955) needed an aide. Hanuš started to work as Krejčí's assistant in the research of cannabis and hashish in December of that year. There, Hanuš also met professors Jan Kabelík and František Šantavý, who, together with Krejčí, laid the foundations of the research of cannabis and its curative effects. Hanuš grew cannabis for research purposes on two fields in the Research Institute of Vegetable Growing and Breeding in Olomouc from 1971. The extracts were also used at the University Hospital Olomouc as a cure for aphthous ulcer, herpes simplex, herpes zoster, and pressure ulcers. Hanuš graduated with a