CME INDIA Presentation by ⚜ Dr. M. Gowri Sankar, MD, Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of General Medicine, Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore.
Today’s History Feature:
Prof. Dr. Ragnar Granit
(1900 – 1991)
💠Finland-Born Swedish Scientist
💠Father of Vision studies
His contributions…
🔸Granit was born to Swedish parents in Finland. He did his medical studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland and earned a degree in experimental physiology and completed his MD in 1927.
🔸After his studies, he got an opportunity to work with two famous English Physiologists, Dr. Edgar Adrian and Sir Charles Sherrington at Oxford University.
🔸After that, he conducted a research on vision at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had a chance to meet Dr. George Wald and Dr. Haldman Hartline.
🔸At that time, Dr. Wald also conducted a research on eye pigments and identified vitamin A and rhodopsin in the retina while Dr. Hartline worked on how rods and cones are connected to the brain.
🔸Later, Dr. Granit rejoined in the laboratory of Sir Charles Sherrington at Oxford, where he developed micro-electrodes and studied electroretinogram. By this method, he recorded the retinal action potentials on the retina of the decerebrated cats.
🔸Further, he proposed a theory of color vision by his research on several animals including humans.
🔸Subsequently, Dr. Granit did extensive studies on muscle physiology, the role of muscle spindles, tendon organs, reflex arc mechanism, gamma motor system and explained the coordination of muscle action and the control of movements.
🔸Upon his return to Finland, he got appointed as the Director of the Nobel institute for Neurophysiology, Stockholm and became the Professor of Physiology at University of Helsinki.
🔸In 1947, he published a book “Sensory Mechanism of the Retina,” it became a classical work in the field of retinal electrophysiology.
🔸As he was in Nobel Committee, he could not be awarded the Nobel Prize earlier. At the year of his retirement, in 1967, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Dr. Hartline and Dr. Wald for their discoveries concerned with the visual process in the eye.
🔸In fact, Prof. Ragnar Granit is celebrated as one of the world’s most important 20th century scholars of the Nervous system and Sensory organs.
🔸To cherish his memory, Ragnar Granit Society in co-operation with the Ragnar Granit Institute, Finland was initiated. That Society offers the awards in the name of Ragnar Granit Prize to recognize the valuable scientific work in the field of bioelectromagnetism.
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A Dynamic Scientific Researcher
Prof. Dr. Ragnar Granit 🙏🏼
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