Roger Sperry

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Roger Wolcott Sperry

Roger Wolcott Sperry (born August 20, 1913 in Hartford , Connecticut , USA ; † April 18, 1994 in Pasadena , California , USA) was an American neurobiologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for research that was important for the development of neurophysiology .

Roger Sperry was born in Hartford in 1913 and grew up in West Hartford , where he attended West Hartford High School. With the help of a scholarship, he studied at Oberlin College , which he graduated with a BA in English in 1935, followed by his master's in psychology at the same institution. Finally, he received his PhD in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1941 . He then spent several years at Harvard University and the Yerkes Laboratory for Primate Biology in Florida before returning to the University of Chicago as a professor.

From 1954 to 1984 he was Professor of Psychobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena .

Sperry first described the disconnection syndrome after severing the corpus callosum in 1961 .

For his research on split-brain patients, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981. He had recognized and was able to prove the different functions of the two brain hemispheres.

In 1960 Sperry was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1963 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 1974 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1973 he received the Passano Award and in 1979 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Ralph W. Gerard Prize .

Fonts

  • Problems outstanding in the evolution of brain function. Cambridge 1964.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Gisela Baumgart: Sperry, Roger Wolcott. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1348 f.
  2. ^ Sperry RW .: Cerebral organization and behavior. In: Science . tape 133 , 1961, pp. 1749-1757 .