Roger Walcott sperry (1913–94) was an american neurological researcher who pioneered much of our understanding of hemispheric specialization. his career began relatively slowly, and he received his...

Roger Walcott sperry (1913–94) was an american neurological researcher who pioneered much of our understanding of hemispheric specialization. his career began relatively slowly, and he received his doctorate in zoology at the university of chicago at the age of 28. While there, he worked with the biophysicist Paul Weiss, studying how the connections between neurons and muscles are formed. This led to further work on the regeneration of neural connections between the retina and brain in amphibians. While doing this work, he met biologist norma dupree, with whom he collaborated; they married in 1949. in 1952, he moved to the california institute of Technology, ending up as professor emeritus of psychobiology. in 1953, one of his graduate students, ronald Myers, invented the split-brain procedure, the study of which later led to sperry’s most important discoveries; ironically, Myers’s initial role is seldom cited in this regard. They fi rst studied the effects of severing the corpus callosum in cats and primates; however, it was sperry’s later work on epileptic patients, in collaboration with neurosurgeon Joseph Bogen, that eventually led to sperry sharing the 1981 nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. sperry’s contributions continue to be carried further by his students, including Jerre Levy and Michael gazzaniga.