The Man from Ironbark: a profile of Professor Jack Pettigrew FRS, flamboyant sensory systems researcher and recipient of the H Barry Collin Research Medal

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This profile has benefitted immeasurably from conversations at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego in November 2010 with Rama Ramachandran and Shaun Collin, as well as telephone or Skype calls with Clyde Oyster, Mike Calford, Olivia Carter (The University of Melbourne) and Jack Pettigrew. In addition, I have communicated with numerous people by e‐mail.

Notes

a.  Colin Blakemore later became the Wayneflete Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford, when only 35, was elected an FRS and became the youngest person to deliver the BBC Reith lectures. He has held many important posts in scientific societies including the British Science Society and recently was the head of the Medical Research Council. He has championed the communication of science to the public and has written and delivered many scientific programs on BBC television. Colin's scientific work has made him a hated figure for animal‐rights activists.

b.  Dr Ramachandran (University of California at San Diego) is renowned for his work on visual illusions and a number of neurological phenomena including phantom limbs, synesthesia and autism.

c.  Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who initiated the change from Latin to English, the citation for Jack that accompanies his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society is more accessible. The citation (reproduced below) points to his many discoveries in different domains. ‘He is outstanding for the number of new directions of research he has initiated in the comparative and developmental physiology of the senses in vertebrates. He was the first to demonstrate that neurons in striate cortex are selective for binocular disparity. He has shown that the binocular visual system of the owl, though very different anatomically, shares many functional and developmental properties with cat and monkey. He showed that non‐visual (noradrenergic) pathways influence the “critical period” for development of binocular neurons in striate cortex. He demonstrated that owls have an auditory map of sound source localization in their mid‐brains. He is quick to appreciate the ecological and evolutionary significance of these discoveries, each of which has opened up a fertile new area of investigation, and he continues to elucidate new problems in the visual, auditory and somatosensory systems of a wide range of vertebrates.’