Papers relating to the clinical and experimental neuroscientific work carried out at the Burden Neurological Institute

(1910-1977), neurophysiologist

William Grey Walter (also known as Grey Walter) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 19 February 1910 to journalist parents Karl Wilhelm Walter (1880-1965) and Minerva (Margaret) Lucrezia Hardy (1879-1953). The Walter family moved from the United States to Britain in 1915, where William remained for the rest of his life. He was educated at Westminster School (1922-1928), before taking the Natural Science Tripos at King’s College, Cambridge (1928-1931). He went on to pursue postgraduate research on nerve physiology and conditioned reflexes, gaining his MA in 1935.

After completing his MA, Walter was invited to work at the Central Pathological Laboratory of the Maudsley Hospital, London, under neuropsychiatrist Frederick Lucien Golla (1877-1968). Since the late 1920s, Golla had become increasingly interested in the clinical applications of the burgeoning field of electroencephalography (EEG), the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp. Noting his skill in technical matters, Golla encouraged Walter to develop increasingly sophisticated EEG devices, and supported his application for a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship to visit the Jena laboratory of German physiologist Hans Berger (1873-1941), widely credited as the founder of electroencephalography. Walter went on to achieve several key ‘firsts’ in electroencephalography, including the first detection of a cerebral tumour using the technique in 1936. Between 1936 and 1939, Walter expanded his research programme and took readings from hundreds of patients, focusing particularly on the electrical patterns of epilepsy.

In 1939, Golla was invited to become director of the new Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders, and invited Walter to become director of the Institute’s Physiology Department. At the Burden, Walter further developed his EEG apparatus, developing the automatic frequency analyser and the toposcope in 1943 and 1950 respectively. His research programme also became increasingly ambitious, with investigations into the cerebral effects of stroboscopic light beginning in 1947 and, later, the discovery of ‘contingent negative variation’ (CNV, or the ‘expectancy wave’) in the 1960s. Walter also played a key role in the professionalization of electroencephalography during this period, co-founding the journal Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology and organising meetings of the EEG Society (1943-1989).

Outside of his clinical work, Walter became a key figure in early British cybernetics, the study of feedback, control, and communication systems in humans and machines that synthesised approaches from engineering, biology, and mathematics. He co-founded the Ratio Club, an informal dining and discussion group which provided a key social outlet for cybernetic enthusiasts, which met between 1949 and 1955. He also built several cybernetic devices in his spare time, the most famous of which were his robotic tortoises, or Machina Speculatrix, designed to function as simple models of the adaptable human brain. These received national attention when they were exhibited on television in 1950 and at the Festival of Britain in 1951. He also became a prolific public intellectual, writing 170 scientific publications, serving as an expert witness in court courses, appearing frequently on the BBC, and writing an immensely popular non-specialist text on his neuroscientific work, The Living Brain (1953). His work also gained a surprising popularity among counter-cultural artists during the 1950s and 1960s, including Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who saw Walter’s research as part of a broader investigation of human consciousness.

Walter was married twice, first to Katharine Monica Ratcliffe in 1934 and then to Vivian Joan Dovey (1915-1980) in 1947, with whom he had one son, Timothy Walter (1949-1976). Walter and Dovey separated in 1960 and divorced in 1973. After their separation, Walter lived with Lorraine Josephine Aldridge (née Donn) until 1972. In 1970, Walter suffered severe brain damage following a road accident, forcing him to retire from full-time research work. He died of a heart attack in 1977.

(1899-1961), electrical engineer

Geoffrey Parr was born in Muswell Hill, London, on 29 December 1899. He was educated at Finsbury Technical College, receiving his college certificate in electrical engineering in 1917. Between 1917 and 1919, he worked as a technical assistant for the Admiralty in Portsmouth. He returned to London in 1919 to take up the post of lecturer and demonstrator at the City and Guilds Technical College.

In 1926, Parr joined the Edison Swan Electric Company as a research engineer in the Valve Department. He was promoted to Head of Technical Services in the Radio Division in 1932. In the 1940s, he turned to technical journalism and publishing, serving as Editor of the Electrical Engineering journal between 1941 and 1949, and later Technical Editor of the science and technology publishing house Chapman and Hall, Ltd, a position he held until his death. He also became a Fellow of the Television Society in 1934, the honorary editor of its journal from 1944, and was elected its honorary secretary in 1945.

During the interwar period, Parr developed a close friendship with neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) and corresponded closely with him regarding the technical aspects of his research in electroencephalography (the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol.

Parr died on 30 May 1961.

Electroencephalographer, active 1940s

E.M. Stewart Gibb was an electroencephalographer in Manchester, England. Active in the 1940s, Gibb worked in the Department of Electroencephalography at the Manchester Royal Infirmary under neurologist Sir Geoffrey Jefferson (1886-1961).

neuroscientist, active 1970s-1980s

Ray Cooper is a retired British neuroscientist. Between 1971 and 1988, he served as Scientific Director of the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. His research at the Burden covered a variety of neuroscientific topics, including electroencephalography, brain injury, slow cortical potentials, and visual processing. He also wrote a history of the Burden’s first fifty years with his colleague Jonathan Bird, which was published in 1989.

(1922-2016), Baron Walton of Detchant, Neurologist

Sir John Nicholas Walton (later Baron Walton of Detchant) was born in Rowlands Gill, County Durham on 16 September 1922. He was educated at Alderman Wraith Grammar School, before studying medicine at Newcastle Medicine School in 1941. After qualifying in 1945, Walton took a position as House Officer at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. In 1947, Walton was called up into the Army, serving as Embarkation Medical Officer in Glasgow and Southampton, before being promoted to second-in-command of the Hospital Ship Oxfordshire during its deployment in Palestine in 1948.

In 1949, Walton returned to the Royal Victoria Infirmary to become a medical registrar, before turning to a career in neurological research, with positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, and the Neurological Research Unit at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square, London. In 1958, he became a consultant neurologist at the University of Newcastle Hospitals, before being invited to take up the first Chair in Neurology at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1968.

From the 1970s onwards, Walton became increasingly involved in political and medical administration, serving as Dean of Medicine at Newcastle from 1971 to 1981 and taking up positions within various committees of the Medical Research Council (MRC), British Medical Association (BMA), and General Medical Council (GMC). He went on to take up a succession of high-profile positions including President of the BMA (1980-1982), President of the GMC (1982-1989), and President of the Royal Society of Medicine (1984-1986).

Walton was knighted in 1979 and given a life peerage in 1989. He sat on a number of committees within the House of Lords, including the Science of Technology Committee and the Medical Ethics Committee.

Walton married Betty Harrison in 1946, with whom he had three children. He died on 21 April 2016.

(1889-1977) 1st Baron Adrian, physiologist

Edgar Douglas Adrian was born in London on 30 November 1889 to parents Alfred Douglas Adrian and Flora Lavinia Barton. He was educated at Westminster School before taking the Natural Sciences Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge. His research on the nerve impulse with his supervisor, physiologist Keith Lucas (1879-1916), won him a fellowship at Trinity College in 1913.

During the First World War, Adrian abandoned research to complete a medical degree at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and he subsequently worked on nerve injuries and shell shock at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square and Connaught Military Hospital, Aldershot. In 1919, he returned to his research at Cambridge and conducted several pioneering studies in electrophysiology and neurology.

In the 1930s, Adrian became increasingly interested in the electrical rhythms of the nervous system and wrote several foundational papers in the burgeoning field of electroencephalography (the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain), including a 1934 paper with B.H.C. Matthews (1906-1986) which confirmed the findings of German physiologist and EEG founder Hans Berger (1873-1941). His research agenda expanded during the Second World War, with investigations into balance, spatial orientation, touch, pain, and smell.

Adrian became Professor of Physiology at Cambridge in 1937 and master of Trinity College in 1951, and occupied a number of prestigious positions in universities and societies in the following decades, including President of the Royal Society (1950-1955) and the Royal Society of Medicine (1960-1961), and Chancellor of the University of Leicester (1957-1971) and the University of Cambridge (1968-1975), as well as taking part in a number of cross-benches on academic, medical, and scientific issues in the House of Lords.

Adrian married Hester Agnes Pinsent (1899-1966) in 1923, with whom he had three children. He died in Cambridge on 4 August 1977.

(1904-1995), neurophysiologist

Mary (Mollie) Agnes Burnston Brown Brazier was born in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset on 18 May 1904. She was educated at Sidcot School, Somerset and Bedford College, Bedford, before studying physiology and biochemistry at the University of London, gaining her BSc in 1926 and Ph.D. in 1930. Her first major research project, conducted at the Maudsley Hospital, London, focused on electrical changes in the skin that occur in thyroid disease. This work received great acclaim, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Van Meter Prize of the American Association for the Study of Goitre in 1934. Following this project, Brazier became increasingly interested in the electrical activity of the human nervous system.

After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940, Brazier moved from London to the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, Massachusetts, where she took up a number of posts as a neurophysiologist in the Departments of Psychiatry, Anaesthesia, and Neurology. While her research in Boston covered a variety of subjects – including psychological selection processes, neurological injuries, and electromyography – Brazier increasingly specialised in electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain), running the Hospital’s EEG Laboratory for much of the Second World War. In 1946, Brazier played a key role in persuading William Grey Walter (1910-1977), a neurophysiologist and EEG expert at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, England, to come to Boston and demonstrate his new EEG frequency analyser device. The device remained in Boston, and helped to facilitate Brazier’s path-breaking computerised analyses of brainwave patterns.

In 1961, Brazier left Massachusetts to join the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she was appointed Professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Biophysics. Here, she expanded her research on the electrical activity in the brain and nervous system, specialising in the use of computing methods to evaluate patients with epilepsy for surgical treatment.

During her career, Brazier played a key role in expanding the international reach of several neuroscientific disciplines. She wrote a seminal textbook The Electrical Activity of the Nervous System in 1957, and was successively appointed Treasurer, Secretary, and finally President of the International Federation of Societies for Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology. She also wrote a number of texts on the history of neurophysiology, including A History of Neurophysiology in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1984) and A History of Neurophysiology in the 19th Century (1988). She continued writing in academic circles right up to her death, with her last essay published in the Journal for the History of the Neurosciences in 1993.

Brazier married Leslie J. Brazier, an electrical engineer, in 1928, with whom she had one son. She died in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on 14 May 1995.

(1912-1983), physiologist

George Duncan Dawson was born in Manchester in 1912. He gained his MSc for research on nerve action potentials in 1933, before qualifying in medicine at Manchester Medical School in 1936. Well known for his skills in electrical engineering, Dawson secured a research appointment at the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1938 and helped to set up the electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) laboratory of neurologist Sir Geoffrey Jefferson (1886-1961).

During the Second World War, Dawson joined the Royal Air Force but was invalided out in 1941 after contracting tuberculosis. While recovering, he embarked upon a series of EEG field tests at the David Lewis Colony in Sandlebridge, Cheshire, studying the electrical brain activity of patients with epilepsy. Attending the early wartime meetings of the EEG Society (1942-1989), Dawson formed collaborative relationships with several prominent EEG enthusiasts, including neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) and psychiatrist Denis Hill (1913-1982).

In 1944, Dawson was invited to join the Medical Research Council unit at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square under neurologist E.A. Carmichael (1896-1978). There he developed techniques for identifying small electroencephalographic signals against background noise while studying patients with epilepsy. The technique has since been celebrated as the foundation of modern conduction velocity studies (the study of the speed of electrical impulses in the human nervous system).

In 1961, Dawson became head of the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. In 1966, he was appointed Second Professor of Physiology at University College London, where he remained until his retirement. In retirement, he continued research into epilepsy, developing computer-based methods for assessing drug treatments at Lingfield Epileptic Colony.

Dawson was married to biochemist and electroencephalographer Mollie Heppenstall, with whom he had two sons. He died on 13 November 1983.

(1913-1999), neurophysiologist

William Albert Cobb was born in Margate, Kent on 25 October 1913. He was educated at Dauntsey’s School, Wiltshire before pursuing a medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, qualifying in 1936. In 1938, he took up a post as resident anaesthetist at King’s George’s Hospital, Ilford and the West London Hospital.

During the Second World War (1939-1945), Cobb worked as an anaesthetist and electroencephalographer for the Emergency Medical Service, a state-run network of hospital services organised by the Ministry of Health. He was based at the Head Injuries Unit at Hurstwood Park Hospital, Lindfield, and focused on the localisation of brain tumours. After the war, Cobb returned to London to become an honorary anaesthetist at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square. There, he was appointed as a clinical neurophysiologist when the hospital joined the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948.

Cobb was married twice, first to Hilda Leonore Hooper in 1941, with whom he had three children, and then to Lorn Cobb. He died on 27 August 1999.

(1904-1972), electroencephalographer

Robert S. Schwab was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1904. He trained in physiology at Cambridge University before qualifying in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He went on to specialise in neurology at the Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, as well as training in neuropathology at the University of Munich and psychiatry at the Boston Psychiatric Hospital.

In 1937, Schwab established and became director of the Brian Wave Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. During his tenure, Schwab established the first technical training course in electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) to be supported by the United States Public Health Service, and conducted research on a number of topics including Parkinson’s disease and the use of EEG in establishing the criteria for death.

Schwab also played a key role in the professional organisation of electroencephalography, serving as President for both the Eastern Association of Electroencephalographers and the American EEG Society and Vice-President of the International Federation of Societies for Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology. He also served as an editor of The EEG Journal throughout his career.

Schwab was married twice, first to Dorothy Schwab (d.1971) and then to Joan Sheahan. Schwab died in Boston, Massachusetts on 6 April 1972.

(1913-1998), neuropsychiatrist

Reginald George Bickford was born in Breewood, South Staffordshire on 20 January 1913. He qualified in medicine at Cambridge University in 1935, before taking up house physician and house surgeon posts at University College Hospital, London.

During the Second World War (1939-1945), Bickford served as a neuropsychiatrist in the Royal Air Force and conducted research on head injuries among flight crews at St Hugh’s Military Hospital (Head Injuries) in Oxford. This work stimulated an interest in the electrical activity of the brain, which would profoundly shape his career in the years to come.

After the war, Bickford accepted a research associate post at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was later promoted to Professor of Physiology and Head of the Department of Electro-encephalography. During this period, his research focused on the clinical applications of electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) in areas ranging from anaesthesia to epilepsy surgery.

In 1969, he moved to the University of California, San Diego to become Professor in the Department of Neurosciences and head of the EEG Laboratory, posts which he retained until his retirement in 1980. In 1992, he received the American EEG Society’s highest honour, the Herbert H. Jasper award.

Bickford was married to Joy Bickford, a psychiatrist at Rochester State Hospital, with whom he had two children. He died in San Diego, California on 26 June 1998.

(1877-1968), neuropsychiatrist

Frederick Lucien Golla was born in Fulham, London on 11 August 1877 to Italian parents Peter Alexander Evasio Golla and Alice Amelia Tingey. He was educated at Tonbridge School and Magdalen College, Oxford, before pursuing medical training at St George’s Hospital, London. He graduated in 1904 and became resident medical officer at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, under surgeon Victor Horsley (1857-1916) and neurologist Gordon Holmes (1876-1965), where he began to pursue research into the human nervous system.

During the First World War, Golla volunteered for field ambulance duty with the Royal Army Medical Corps in August 1914 and was invalided out of the army after contracting bronchial pneumonia in June 1915. In August 1915, he returned to the Royal Army Medical Corps and rose to the rank of captain. His wartime research on tetanus was widely celebrated, leading to his post-war promotion to consultant physician at St George’s Hospital, where he worked on nervous conduction with neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952).

In 1923, Golla was appointed director of the Central Pathological Laboratory at the Maudsley Hospital, London. As well as controlling the educational programme of the Maudsley Hospital medical school, Golla continued to conduct research with junior colleagues. In the 1930s, he collaborated with neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) in pioneering studies of electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain), including the first detection of a cerebral tumour using the technique in 1936.

In 1939, Golla was invited to become director of the new Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research unit specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders. Under Golla’s direction, the Burden achieved several ‘firsts’ in British psychiatry, including the first trials of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in 1939 and the first leucotomy (lobotomy) in 1941. He retired from the Burden in 1959.

Golla was married twice, first to Thérèse d'Haussaire in 1908, who fatally contracted bronchial pneumonia while nursing Golla back to health in 1915, and then to Yvonne Lilly Brisco Ray in 1919. He had one daughter, Yolande Golla, who would later co-author research at the Burden Neurological Institute. Golla died of heart failure on 6 February 1968.

The Edison and Swan Electric Light Company Limited was a manufacturer of electrical goods based in London, England. It was founded by chemist and inventor Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) on 26 October 1883.

In 1860, Swan began conducting experiments in electric lighting. After several setbacks, Swan successfully produced an incandescent electric lamp in 1878, which he patented on 27 November 1880 (Patent No. 4933). After setting up the Swan United Electric Company to commercially produce the lamp, Swan was threatened with legal action by the rival Edison Electric Light Company, who claimed infringement of the patents taken out by American inventor and scientist Thomas Edison (1847-1931). Instead of going to trial, the two companies agreed to merge, becoming the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company Limited in 1883. By combining forces, the Company was able to suppress competition in Britain and dominate the market with their ‘Ediswan’ light bulbs, produced in factories in Sunderland, Brimsdown, and Ponders End.

In the early twentieth-century, the company expanded beyond light bulbs, opening the country’s first radio valve factory in 1916 and beginning the production of vacuum cleaners in 1924. In following years, Edison and Swan factories also produced radio sets, car batteries, cathode ray tubes, and electric cables. During the Second World War, the company assisted researchers at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, in their production of equipment for electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and electroencephalography (EEG).

In 1957, the Edison and Swan Electric Company was amalgamated with Siemens Brothers and Company within the Associated Electrical Industries Group (AEI) to form Siemens Edison Swan Limited. Siemens Edison Swan light bulbs were also produced under the Mazda (General Electric) brand licence.

The EEG Society (or Electroencephalographic Society) was an international scientific society established to facilitate the discussion and promotion of electroencephalography (the recording of the electrical activity of the brain). The Society developed out of an informal discussion group organised by neurophysiologist William Grey Walter (1910-1977) in 1942 and was formally re-organised as the EEG Society in 1943, with electrophysiologist E.D. Adrian (1889-1977) serving as its first President.

The EEG Society was formally incorporated in 1951 and registered as a charity in 1983. Following a vote by its members in 1989, the Society changed its name to the British Society for Clinical Neurophysiology (BSCN). The BSCN remains active today, promoting research and public awareness of neurophysiology and associated neuroscientific disciplines.

Marconi Instruments Limited was a British manufacturer of electronic test and measurement equipment, based in St Albans and Stevenage, England. The company was formed following the Marconi Company buy-out of Marconi-Ecko Instruments in 1941 and was sold to IFR Systems Inc. in 1998. The company was named after Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), a pioneer in radio and telegraphy who founded the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company (later the Marconi Company) in 1897.