Sperry, Roger W.

Sperry, Roger W. (Wolcott) (1913–  ) neurobiologist; born in Hartford, Conn. He was a research fellow at Harvard (1941–46), worked at the neurological diseases laboratory of the National Institutes of Health (1952–53), then joined the California Institute of Technology (1954–84). He demonstrated that neural circuitry is specifically "wired" for particular functions, and pioneered experiments in which he severed the connections between the right and left brain hemispheres. These "split-brain" studies led to his view that the mind is an "emergent property" arising from the complexity of the physical brain. He was awarded one-third the 1981 Nobel Prize in physiology.