Julian Jack | |
---|---|
Born | James Julian Bennett Jack 25 March 1936 [1] Invercargill, New Zealand |
Education | University of Otago (MMedSci, PhD) University of Oxford (BM, MA) |
Awards | Rhodes Scholarship |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | University of Oxford |
Thesis | Inhibition and excitation in the mammalian spinal cord (1960) |
Doctoral students |
James Julian Bennett Jack FRS [4] (born 25 March 1936) is a New Zealand physiologist. [5]
Jack graduated from the University of Otago with a PhD in 1960. [1] [6] [7] After his PhD, Jack was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1960 from Magdalen College, Oxford [8] where he was awarded Master of Arts and Bachelor of Medicine degrees in 1963. [1]
Jack studies how nerve cells, or neurons, communicate with one another in the nervous system. He is also interested in understanding how chemical and electrical signals move through neural networks, such as the spinal cord or cerebral cortex. [4] Although neurons form large networks, these cells do not actually touch each other. Instead, when the end of a nerve is activated it releases ions or chemicals known as neurotransmitters. [4] Subsequently, these move across the gap, or synapse, between the neuron and the adjacent cell in the network, activating its receptors and perpetuating the signal. [4] Jack applies theoretical and experimental approaches to research this process of synaptic transmission. [4] This includes the use of neurophysiology methods to record bioelectrical activity and mathematical models to analyse the central and peripheral nervous systems. His work on neurotransmission is offering insight into disorders of the nervous system, such as Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis, and has the potential to improve their diagnosis. [4]
Jack was Lecturer and Reader at University Laboratory of Physiology at the University of Oxford. [9] [6] His former doctoral students include David Attwell, Michael Hausser [2] and Dimitri Kullmann. [3]
Jack was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997. [4]
Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.
John Graham White is an Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research interests are in the biology of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and laser microscopy.
Sir Charles Richard Arthur Catlow FLSW is a British chemist and professor at University College London and Cardiff University. Previously, he was Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory (1998–2007), and Wolfson Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution. Since 2016, he has served as the foreign secretary of the Royal Society., and since 2021 as President of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP).
Philip Candelas, is a British physicist and mathematician. After 20 years at the University of Texas at Austin, he served as Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford until 2020 and is a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
Simon Tavaré is the founding Director of the Herbert and Florence Irving Institute of Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia, he was Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Professor of Cancer Research at the Department of Oncology and Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge.
Michael A. Häusser FRS FMedSci is professor of Neuroscience, based in the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at University College London (UCL).
Henry James Snaith is a professor in physics in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Research from his group has led to the creation of a new research field, based on halide perovskites for use as solar absorbers. Many individuals who were PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in Snaith's group have now established research groups, independent research portfolios and commercial enterprises. He co-founded Oxford Photovoltaics in 2010 to commercialise perovskite based tandem solar cells.
Dimitri Michael Kullmann is a professor of neurology at the UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), and leads the synaptopathies initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust. Kullmann is a member of the Queen Square Institute of Neurology Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy and a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Julia Alison Noble is a British engineer. She has been Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St Hilda's College since 2011, and Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the university. As of 2017, she is the chief technology officer of Intelligent Ultrasound Limited, an Oxford spin-off in medical imaging that she cofounded. She was director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) from 2012 to 2016. In 2023 she became the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society.
Anne Jacqueline Ridley is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London.
James Briscoe is a senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London and editor-in-chief of the journal Development.
E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) is a bibliographic database and union catalogue of electronic theses provided by the British Library, the National Library of the United Kingdom. As of February 2022 EThOS provides access to over 500,000 doctoral theses awarded by over 140 UK higher education institutions, with around 3,000 new thesis records added every month.
Guy Roderick Wilkinson is a particle physicist, working on the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN, professor of physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Christ Church, where he holds the college's Alfred Moritz Studentship.
Timothy Peter Softley is Pro-vice-chancellor (PVC) for research and knowledge transfer at the University of Birmingham.
Stanley William Herbert Cowley is a British physicist, Emeritus Professor of Solar Planetary Physics at the University of Leicester.
Sean Munro is a Group Leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). From 2012 until 2023, he served as Head of the Cell Biology Division.
Mark Lee Mayer is scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research investigates glutamate receptor ion channels, the major mediators of excitatory synapses in the brain. He has made numerous observations that have changed our view of receptor function and neurotransmission in the brain. Major findings include discovery of the block of NMDA receptors by extracellular Mg and their high Ca permeability; analysis of the permeation and block of Ca permeable AMPA and kainate receptors by cytoplasmic polyamines; and structural studies on ligand binding, allosteric modulation, and gating using X-ray diffraction and cryoelectron microscopy.
Richard M. Harland is CH Li Distinguished Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at the University of California, Berkeley.
Andrew Dawson Taylor was director of the Science and Technology Facilities Council National Laboratories – Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Daresbury Laboratory, and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh until his retirement in 2019.
Irene Miguel-Aliaga is a Spanish-British physiologist who is Professor of Genetics and Physiology at Imperial College London. Her research investigates the plasticity of adult organs, and why certain organs change shape in response to environmental changes. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
“All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.