Granit, Ragnar

Granit, Ragnar 

Born Oct. 30, 1900, in Helsinki. Swedish neurophysiologist. President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1963 to 1965.

Granit graduated from a normal school in Sweden and from the University of Helsinki. He received his M.D. degree in 1927. From 1937 to 1940 he was a professor of physiology at the University of Helsinki. He became a professor of neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1940 and served as director of the neurophysiology department at the Nobel Institute of Medicine in Stockholm from 1945 to 1967.

Granit’s main works deal with the physiology of sensory organs. He has studied electrical processes in an optical analyzer. Granit and his school furthered the study of the central regulation of the sensitivity of muscle receptors, which opened new frontiers in the physiology of motion.

Granit shared the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine with G. Wald and H. Hartline in 1967. He was awarded the Sherrington Gold Medal in 1967.

WORKS

Sensory Mechanisms of the Retina. London–New York–Toronto, 1947.
Receptors and Sensory Perception. New Haven, Conn., 1955.
Charles Scott Sherrington: An Appraisal. London, 1966.
Mechanisms Regulating the Discharge of Motoneurons. 1972.
In Russian translation:
Elektrofiziologicheskoe issledovanie retseptsii. Moscow, 1957.
Osnovy reguliatsii dvizhenii. Moscow, 1973.