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College Roll Bio
Eccles, John Carew
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Qualifications
Kt (1958) AC (1990) Nobel Prize (1963) MB BS Melb (1925) BA Oxon (1927) MA DPhil Oxon (1929) FRACP (1938) (Foundation) FRS (1941) FAA (1954) (Foundation)†
Born
27/01/1903
Died
02/05/1997
John Carew Eccles, recognised internationally for his outstanding contributions to neuroscience over more than six decades, was born in Northcote, a Melbourne suburb, the first of two children of schoolteacher parents. Educated at Warrnambool and Melbourne High Schools, he gained a Senior Scholarship to Melbourne University, and, although deeply interested in mathematics, he chose medicine. He commenced his course in 1920 and graduated with First Class Honours early in 1925. As a student he had became interested in the mind-brain problem, and late in 1925 travelled to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to pursue a career in neurophysiology as a pupil of Sir Charles Sherrington, Waynflete Professor of Physiology.
Sherrington had established in Oxford an exceptional “School” of experimental neurophysiology, and, after completing the Final Honour School in Physiology and Biochemistry, Eccles joined his team in 1927 studying spinal reflexes in the cat. This research led in 1932 to the publication of the classical monograph Reflex Activity of the Spinal Cord” by Creed, Denny-Brown, Eccles, Liddell and Sherrington. Eccles also became interested in synaptic transmission in the heart and sympathetic ganglia, as more readily studied models for transmission in the central nervous system. Believing that transmission at synapses was too rapid to be a chemical process, Eccles considered that synaptic excitation was initially electrical in nature. This led to a prolonged controversy with those, including Sir Henry Dale and his pharmacological colleagues, who held that synaptic transmission was a chemical process.
Sherrington retired in 1935, and Eccles’s concern about the reduced Oxford interests in neurophysiology and increasing political uncertainty in Europe led him to apply for the Directorship of the Kanematsu Memorial Institute of Pathology at Sydney Hospital. Here, from 1937 he established a research team which included Bernard Katz and Stephan Kuffler, and the outcome of their investigation of transmission at the neuromuscular junction convinced Eccles that acetylcholine was responsible for end-plate potentials initiated by motor nerve action potentials. Wartime activities included participation in committees and research projects dealing with vision, hearing, noise and communication in aircraft and tanks. Since future expansion of his research facilities appeared to be unlikely, Eccles moved in 1943 to the Chair of Physiology at the Medical School of the University of Otago in Dunedin.
Despite a heavy teaching load he was at last able to begin to investigate synaptic transmission in the spinal cord, initially by recording synaptic potentials from ventral roots and then extracellularly near motoneurones using insulated metal electrodes. Eccles still strongly maintained that central synaptic transmission was electrical, and having become influenced by the teachings of the philosopher Karl Popper, then at Canterbury University College in Christchurch, he formulated and published hypotheses of electrical excitatory and inhibitory transmission in the spinal cord which could be tested experimentally. The major step forward occurred in mid-1951 when Eccles and his colleagues, for the first time, successfully recorded intracellular potentials from spinal motoneurones in-vivo. This technique revolutionized central nervous system neurophysiology, and the opposite polarities of excitatory and inhibitory potentials convinced Eccles that these transmission processes must be chemical. He thus immediately abandoned the electrical hypotheses that he had so stoutly defended.
Earlier in 1950 Eccles had accepted an invitation from the Australian National University to the Foundation Chair of Physiology in the John Curtin School of Medical Research, and he remained in Dunedin until late 1952 awaiting completion of temporary laboratories in Canberra. He had in January-March of that year delivered in Oxford the Waynflete Lectures, which formed the basis of a major and influential monograph The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind: The Principles of Neurophysiology. Published in 1953, this included his hypotheses related to mind-brain interactions, will and consciousness.
Eccles began experimentation in Canberra in March 1953, the beginning of what he described as “fourteen golden years, scientifically speaking”. The intracellular recording technique was further developed, and a series of papers published in 1955 provided for the first time an understanding of the ionic conductance increases underlying synaptic excitation and inhibition in the spinal cord. Subsequent important studies concerned the cholinergic nature of excitation at motor axon-collateral synapses, the di-synaptic nature of “direct” inhibition, and the process of spinal “presynaptic” inhibition. From late 1961 he extended his studies to dorsal column nuclei, the ventro-basal thalamus, the hippocampus and the cerebellum, with a special interest in inhibition. In particular, Eccles's studies in Canberra, and later in Chicago and Buffalo, disclosed the mode of operation of the main neuronal elements of the mammalian cerebellar cortex. He also maintained his interest in learning, memory and conscious experience, although he never studied neurones and their interconnectivity in the neo-cortex.
Attracting numerous established, and postdoctoral, scientists and research students to Canberra, the majority of whom continued a tradition of rigorous and highest quality research in neuroscience, Eccles created a remarkably productive “School” of neurophysiology. Additionally, he actively encouraged developments in neuropharmacology and neurochemistry, which later contributed to the recognition of amino acids as important central excitatory and inhibitory transmitters. In 1963 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hodgkin and Huxley for his fundamental contributions to the ionic mechanisms of synaptic transmission in the brain.
Faced with retirement in 1968, Eccles was concerned that the research facilities which would then be available to him in Canberra would severely limit continuation of his research. He resigned in August 1996 to take up a senior appointment at the Institute of Biomedical Research, which had been established in Chicago by the American Medical Association, and in 1968 he moved to Buffalo as Distinguished Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the State University of New York. Here, until his voluntary retirement in 1975, he actively participated in laboratory research, continuing in particular his study of the cerebella cortex. At the age of 72 he retired to Contra in Switzerland, from where he travelled widely, continued his philosophical interests and published numerous articles and books dealing with the mind-brain problem. His last book, How the Self Controls its Brain was published in 1994.
Eccles recounted how, when 18 years old, he had a sudden overwhelming experience which aroused his intense interest in the mind-brain problem and resulted in his spending his life in the neural sciences with some continuing involvement in philosophy. He was a declared dualist and searched relentlessly for mechanisms by which the mind controls the body. His views met strong opposition from many neuroscientists, particularly as his hypotheses were regarded as too imprecise and untestable. Nevertheless, in grappling with the mind-brain problem he showed the same broad knowledge as was displayed in his experimental activities, and extracted principles of importance for his philosophical ideas.
John Eccles was widely recognised nationally and internationally for his distinction as an outstanding neurophysiologist. His energy and strength of motivation were almost overwhelming, as was his appetite for new knowledge of the brain. He was indeed fortunate in being able to develop his experimental expertise during the last years of the Sherrington “school” in Oxford, at which time the electrophysiological stimulating and recording equipment was relatively crude, and to hone his expertise during the next 40 years of increasing sophistication resulting from the introduction of thermionic “valves”, cathode ray tubes, glass microelectrodes, transistors, integrated circuits and computers. He took considerable pride in his anatomical knowledge of the central nervous system and his surgical expertise, and always ensured that the technical equipment available for experimentation was the best available. His experiments were carefully planned and executed, but always with sufficient flexibility to exploit an unexpected finding. Much of his success depended on an exceptional ability to create productive research teams. He was a prolific writer; his bibliography lists 568 items, including 19 books of which he was sole author of 12.
Eccles married Irene Frances Miller, whom he had met in Melbourne, in Oxford in 1928, and they had five daughters and four sons. When he decided to move to the United States in 1966, his wife preferred to remain in Australia close to her family and their marriage was dissolved in 1968. In 1968 he married Helena Taborikova, a neurophysiologist who collaborated closely with him from 1966 until he ceased experimentation in 1975, after which they moved to Switzerland. Eccles was a Foundation Fellow of the College, and also of the Australian Academy of Science of which he was the second President. He was elected to Fellowship of numerous Academies and learned Societies abroad, including the Royal Society of London from which he received a Royal Medal in 1962. He was the recipient of many Honorary Degrees and distinguished lectureships which recognized his immense contributions to neuroscience. He was also named Australian of the Year in 1963.
Author
DR CURTIS
References
Curtis,DR & Andersen, P. John Carew Eccles 1903-1997, Hist Rec Aust Sci,2001, 13 439-473 SMH 5 May 1997 Med J Aust 1997 167 157; The Australian Academy of Science Biographical Memoirs Page http://www.science.org.au/academy/memoirs/eccles.htm last accessed 8 Jul 2003
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:39 PM
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