Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Physiologie, Univ. de Montreal; Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI)
Herbert Jasper was born in Oregon. His father was a clergyman and religious scholar. After leaving Brown University, Jasper earned his MD at McGill in 1943, not because he wanted to be a doctor but to get access to patients to study. Today he is recognized as one of the world's leading neurophysiologists, and conducted the first electroencephalograph (EEG) in the US in 1935. He led the Montreal Neurological Institute's neurophysiology and EEG labs from 1939 to 1961, at the request of Wilder Penfield, MNI's founder. He had impressed Penfield with his EEG skills on the exposed human brain while Penfield operated. He also co-wrote an important text on epilepsy with Penfield. "When I was 16, I told my father I was going to understand the mind and the brain," Jasper says. "This became my object in life, and it's never changed... I would do anything to understand more about how the brain works." Jasper would sometimes spend 24 hours a day in the lab on an experiment. Recipient of the Albert Einstein Prize from the World Cultural Council (whose members include 25 Nobel Prize winners), 1996. Currently Jasper is writing his memoirs, and plays tennis and cross-country skis. He lives with his third wife, Mary Lou.
Sources: The McGill Reporter, Jan. 25, 1996
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