Hubel, << HYOO buhl, >> David Hunter (1926-2013), a Canadian-born American neurobiologist and neurophysiologist, shared the 1981 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with American scientist Roger W. Sperry and Torsten Wiesel from Sweden, for their research on the organization and functioning of the brain.
Hubel and Wiesel collaborated in their research into the processing of information in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that receives messages from the eyes. They analyzed the nerve impulses sent from the retina of the eye to areas of the brain. They implanted tiny electrodes made of tungsten into the brains of anesthetized animals, and studied the responses of individual cortical cells (cells of the cortex of the brain) to different stimuli. They also conducted extensive research into the physiology and anatomy of the visual cortex of the brain.
Hubel was born on Feb. 27, 1926, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He studied at McGill University in Montreal, and worked at the Montreal Neurological Institute in Canada and the Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the United States. In 1953, he became a United States citizen. Beginning in 1959, he taught neurobiology and physiology at Harvard University. He died on Sept. 22, 2013.
