Little Atoms with Colin Blakemore

On this week's show Neil Denny talks to Colin Blakemore.

Colin Blakemore, FMedSci, FRCP (Hon), FIBiol (Hon), FRS, is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford. He also holds a Professorship at the University of Warwick and is Chairman of the Neuroscience Research Partnership in Singapore. He was recently appointed as Chair of the Food Standards Agency’s new General Advisory Committee on Science. From 2003-2007 he was Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council.

Colin Blakemore studied Medical Sciences at Cambridge and completed a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. After working for 11 years in Cambridge, he moved to Oxford as Waynflete Professor of Physiology in 1979, and from 1996-2003 he was also Director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. His research has been concerned with many aspects of vision, early development of the brain and plasticity of the cerebral cortex. His prizes include the Robert Bing Prize from the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, the Prix Netter from the French Académie Nationale de Médecine, the Gregg Medal of the Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists, the John P. McGovern Science and Society Medal from Sigma Xi, the international Alcon Prize for vision research and the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize. He has been President and Chairman of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and President of the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and the Biosciences Federation.

Colin has been actively involved in the public communication of science for more than 30 years. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television, has published a number of books about science for a general readership, and he writes for the national and international media. He works with and for the Science Museum, London, the European Dana Alliance for the Brain, the Cheltenham Festival of Science, the Science Media Centre and Sense about Science. He is President of the Association of British Science Writers.