 He advised James Humes, the navy pathologist who performed the autopsy on John F. Kennedy, and based on his personal experience and observations became a skeptic of the "Lone gunman theory".After his time at the National Institutes of Health, in 1964 Livingston founded the neuroscience department, the first of its kind in the world, at the newly built University of California, San Diego campus.He served as chairman of the department until 1970, as professor until 1989, and as professor emeritus until his death in 2002.