Pedro Lau Ribeiro was a psychiatrist and was a student in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, FCT/UNL, for several years. He was a student of MA in History and Philosophy of Science, which he concluded in 2002 with the dissertation entitled The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in Portugal (1887-1902). He was about to finish his doctoral dissertation in History and Philosophy of Science, specialty of Epistemology of Sciences, with the thesis Lisbon School of Tropical Medicine and Public Health in the Portuguese colonies (1902-1935): the effectiveness of the specialization of national medicine, when he suddenly died.

He made several contributions to the History of Portuguese Scientific Institutions and for the History of Medicine in Portugal and its Colonies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with relevance to the Portuguese historiography.