About Colin Blakemore
Sir Colin Blakemore was a British neurobiologist, specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was Yeung Kin Man Professor of Neuroscience and senior fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study at City University of Hong Kong. He was a distinguished senior fellow in the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London and Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a past Chief Executive of the British Medical Research Council (MRC). He was best known to the public as a communicator of science but also as the target of a long-running animal rights campaign. According to The Observer, he was both "one of the most powerful scientists in the UK" and "a hate figure for the animal rights movement". Blakemore won a state scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he gained a BA degree (first-class honours) in Medical Sciences in 1965, and was promoted to an MA in 1969. From this same university he was awarded a DSc higher degree in 1989. In 1993, he received the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine and in 1996 won the Alcon Research Institute Award for research relevant to clinical ophthalmology. When Blakemore was five, his father became a television repair engineer.
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