text: Receptor theory is the application of receptor models to explain drug behavior. Pharmacological receptor models preceded accurate knowledge of receptors by many years. John Newport Langley and Paul Ehrlich introduced the concept that receptors can mediate drug action at the beginning of the 20th century. Alfred Joseph Clark was the first to quantify drug-induced biological responses (specifically, f-mediated receptor activation). So far, nearly all of the quantitative theoretical modelling of receptor function has centred on ligand-gated ion channels and G protein-coupled receptors.