Memories of John Eccles

Abstract

This article contains an account of the career of John Eccles that can be divided into two parts. The first extends from 1925, when he won a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College Oxford, to 1975, when he took voluntary retirement from the State University of New York at Buffalo. During this period, he set up six different laboratories in which he carried out research on synaptic mechanisms that provide the basis of neuroscience. The second period is the 20 years between his retirement and death in Switzerland, which he spent on the problem of the relationship between mind and brain.