Corneliu E. Giurgea

Corneliu E. Giurgea (6 January 1923, Bucharest – 30 December 1995, Brussels) was a Romanian psychologist and chemist. In 1964 he synthetised Piracetam, which he has described as a nootropic.

Giurgea coined the term nootropic in 1972.

He stated that nootropic drugs should have the following characteristics:

He received a Ph.D. in medicine from the University of Bucharest, where he also taught for several years. He continued his research and specialisation in Psychology (doc) at the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg, under some of Ivan Pavlov's closest collaborators such as Pyotr Kupalov. He was then a post-doc at the University of Rochester and subsequently a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain and scientific counselor and researcher at the Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB.