Ferrier Lecture
Encyclopedia
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
lectureship given every three years "on a subject related to the advancement of natural knowledge on the structure and function of the nervous system". It was created in 1928 to honour the memory of Sir David Ferrier
David Ferrier
Sir David Ferrier, FRS was a pioneering Scottish neurologist and psychologist.-Life:Ferrier was born in Woodside, Aberdeen and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School before studying for an MA at Aberdeen University...
, a neurologist who was the first British scientist to electronically stimulate the brain for the purpose of scientific study.
In its 81-year history, the Lecture has been given 27 times. It has never been given more than once by the same person, and all lecturers have been male. The first lecture was given in 1929 by Charles Scott Sherrington
Charles Scott Sherrington
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, OM, GBE, PRS was an English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, and a pathologist, Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society in the early 1920s...
, and was titled "Some functional problems attaching to convergence". The most recent lecturer was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who presented a lecture in 2007 titled "Brain development and brain repair: Molecules and mechanisms that control neuronal wiring". In 1971, the lecture was given by two individuals (David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel) on the same topic, with the title "The function and architecture of the visual cortex".
List of Lecturers
| Year | Name | Lecture title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 |
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|1932||||"Some correlations between skull and brain" ||
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|1935||||"Problems connected with the principle of humeral transmission of nervous impulses"|| –
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|1938||||"Some problems of localization in the central nervous system"||
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|1941||||"Fatigue following highly skilled work"||
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|1944||||"The organization of the visual cortex in man"||
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|1947||||"Some observations of the cerebral cortex of Man"||
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|1950||||"Growth and plasticity in the nervous system"|| –
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|1953||||"The contribution of clinical observation to cerebral physiology"||
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|1956||||"Inquiries into the anatomical basis of olfactory discrimination"||
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|1959||||"The nature of central inhibitory action"||
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|1962||||"Visual adaptation"||
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|1965||||"Physiological properties of vertebrate and invertebrate neurological cells and the movement of substances through the nervous system"||
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|1968||||"Studies of a primates brain and hand"||
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|1971|| and Torsten Nils Wiesel||"The function and architecture of the visual cortex"||
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|1974||||"Body temperature and fever, changes in our views during the last decade"||
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|1977||||"The neuron network of the cerebral cortex, a functional interpretation"||
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|1980||||"Cerebral cortex and the design of the eye"|| –
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|1983||||"Amino acids and peptides: fast and slow chemical signals in the nervous system"|| –
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|1986||||"The actions of parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves in human micturition, erection and seminal emission, and their restoration in paraplegic patients by implanted electrical stimulators"|| –
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|1989 ||||"Side glances at blindsight, recent approaches to implicit discrimination in human cortical blindness"||
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|1992||||"Seeing depth with two eyes, stereopsis"||
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|1995||||"Behind the scene: an exploration of the visual brain"||
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|1998||||"The nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and synaptic plasticity"||
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|2001||||"Patterning the embryonic brain"|| –
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|2004||||"Magnetic brain stimulation: what can it tell us about brain function?"||
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|2007||||"Brain development and brain repair: Molecules and mechanisms that control neuronal wiring"|| –
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|2010||||"Plasticity of the brain: the key to human development, cognition and evolution"||
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