Professor Geoffrey (Geoff) Raisman FRS (28 June 1939 – 27 January 2017) was a British

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

Personal life

He was born in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

and died in London. His parents were Harry and Celia Raisman, both also born in Leeds. Geoffrey's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He describes his family's story in his book, The Undark Sky. Raisman was not religious. He attended

Roundhay School Roundhay is a large suburb in north-east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Roundhay had a population of 22,546 in 2011. It sits in the Roundhay ward of Leeds City Council and Leeds North East parliamentary constituency. History Etymology Roundh ...

and

Pembroke College, Oxford Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located at Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named after ...

Career

He was chair of neural regeneration at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

's Institute of

Neurology Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine), medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of co ...

. In 2014, his team claimed to have regrown

nerve cells A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. No ...

where they had been severed, restoring the damaged

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the spi ...

of the Polish paraplegic

Darek Fidyka Dariusz "Darek" Fidyka (born ) is a Polish firefighter and recovering paraplegic who became the first person in history to verifiably recover sensory and motor function after the complete severing of his spinal cord. Having been paralysed from ...

External links

*http://www.nichollsfoundationhullander.org/professor-geoffrey-raisman/ *http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/one-small-step-annals-of-medicine-d-t-max

References

1939 births 2017 deaths British neuroscientists English people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Scientists from Yorkshire People educated at Roundhay School Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-med-bio-stub