John Zachary Young

John Zachary Young, May 1978

John Zachary Young (born March 18, 1907 in Bristol , † July 4, 1997 in Oxford ) was a British zoologist , anatomist and neurobiologist .

John Zachary Young was a great-grand-nephew of Thomas Young , a grandson of John Eliot Howard , a great-grandson of Luke Howard, and a 2nd cousin of Henry Eliot Howard .

Young studied at Marlborough College and Magdalen College ( University of Oxford , among others with Edwin Stephen Goodrich and Gavin Rylands de Beer ), where he obtained a master's degree in zoology in 1928 . In 1928/1929 he was on a research stay at the Naples Zoological Station .

From 1933 to 1945 Young was a lecturer in anatomy at Oxford University , interrupted by a research stay in 1936 in Chicago , St. Louis and at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole , Massachusetts . During the Second World War, Young worked (among others with Ludwig Guttmann and the later Nobel Prize winner Peter Brian Medawar ) on injuries to the nervous system. In 1945 Young became the first zoologist in the United Kingdom to be professor of anatomy in a medical school at the University of London . Even after his retirement in 1974 he remained scientifically active.

John Z. Young carried out fundamental studies of the invertebrate nervous system . He discovered the giant axon of the squid and is considered a pioneer of neurobiological research on octopuses , where he the radula , Statozysten , eye muscles, viewing behavior and memory explored. Young published books on biology and zoology , but also on the brain and mind .

Young was married to Phyllis Heaney, with whom he had two children, and later to Raye Parsons, with whom he had one child.

Awards, memberships and honorary lectures (selection)

• 1945 member of the Royal Society
• 1950 Reith Lectures : “Doubt and Certainty in Science”
• 1957 Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1965 Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society : “The organization of a memory system”
• 1967 Royal Medal of the Royal Society : "In recognition of his outstanding researches correlating neural structure with function."
• 1972 member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
• 1973 Linné Medal from the Linnean Society of London
• 1973 member of the American Philosophical Society
• 1986 honorary member of the British Academy

Sources and References

literature

• Larry R. Squire: The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography. Society for Neuroscience 1996, ISBN 0-916110-51-6 ( PDF, 2.5 MB )
• Quentin Bone: Obituary: Professor JZ Young. In: The Independent , July 7, 1997

Web links

Commons : John Zachary Young  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• John Zachary Young at neurotree.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Young, John Zachary (1907-1997). In: collections.royalsociety.org. Retrieved November 9, 2017 . 
2. ^ John Zachary Young: Doubt and Certainty in Science: 1950, The Reith Lectures - BBC Radio 4. In: bbc.co.uk. December 21, 1950, accessed November 9, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter Y. (PDF; 117 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved November 9, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Annuario della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 2017 (PDF, 1.9 MB); accessed on September 13, 2019.
5. ^ American Philosophical Society: Member History. In: search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved November 9, 2017 . 
6. ^ Deceased Fellows. In: britac.ac.uk. British Academy , accessed September 13, 2019 .