V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Center for Brain and Cognition; Emertius Distinguished Professor, Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program
V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and an Emeritus Distinguished Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. Ramachandran initially trained as a doctor and obtained a Ph.D. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Ramachandran’s early work was on visual perception, but he is best known for his experiments in behavioral neurology which, despite their apparent simplicity, have had a profound impact on the way we think about the brain.
In 2005, he was awarded the Henry Dale Medal and elected to an honorary life fellowship by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. His other honors and awards include fellowships from All Souls College, Oxford, and from Stanford University; the Presidential Lecture award from the American Academy of Neurology, two honorary doctorates, the annual Ramon Y Cajal award from the International Neuropsychiatry Society, and the Ariens-Kappers Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2003, he gave the annual BBC Reith Lectures and was the first physician/psychologist to give the lectures since they were begun by Bertrand Russel in 1949.
In 1995, he gave the Decade of the Brain lecture at the 25th annual (Silver Jubilee) meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Most recently the President of India conferred on him the second highest civilian award and honorific title in India, the Padma Bhushan. Newsweek magazine has named him a member of “The Century Club” – one of the “hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century.”