The Physiological Society is sad to report the death of neuroscientist David Hubel, aged 87. Hubel shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Roger Sperry and Torsten Wiesel for discoveries around information processing in the visual system.
David was also an Honorary Member of The Society and a noted contributor to our journals.
President Jonathan Ashmore, said: “David Hubel, together with Torsten Wiesel, played a key role in creating the neuroscience of vision, their work underpinning much of the current understanding of how the brain processes sensory information. Although now impossible to imagine any textbook not referring to Hubel and Wiesel, their original papers were published in The Journal of Physiology, giving the Society a privileged role in developing this whole field. His death is a great loss to physiology.”
Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Physiology, David Paterson, said: “The Journal of Physiology owes a lot to David Hubel FRS and Nobel laureate. He was a man of great inspiration and discovery in visual neuroscience, but importantly to me, he was a very kind man who had great humanity. His younger son Paul and myself were contempories at New College, Oxford, and I shared many happy times with David and his late wife Ruth in Oxford and Boston. The world of physiology has lost one of its giants and the boys have lost their wonderful father. He will be sadly missed by all.”