Professor Sir Colin Blakemore

Biography

Colin Blakemore, FMedSci, HonFRCP, FRS, is Professor of Neuroscience & Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford. He studied Medical Sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and did a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at Cambridge for 11 years and was Director of Studies in Medicine at Downing from 1971 to 1979, when he moved to Oxford as Waynflete Professor of Physiology and later Director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. From 2003-7 he was Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council. His research has been concerned with vision, development of the brain, plasticity of the cerebral cortex and neurodegenerative disease. He now leads a major project aimed at integrating philosophical and scientific approaches to the study of perception, and he is continuing work on the earliest stages of development of the human brain. He has been President of the British Science Association, the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and the Society of Biology. He is also passionately committed to engagement between science and the public, and to the importance of science in government. He was knighted in 2014 for services to scientific research, policy and outreach.

Research Interest

Neuroscience