Charles Scott Sherrington

Sherrington was the first to recognize the importantance of studying reflexes in the spinal cord as a way of investigating the general properties of neurons. He is also known for his study of the synapse, a word which he coined for the then theoretical connecting point of neurons. One of Sherrington's students, John Carew Eccles later won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his work on the synapse.

Sherrington was born in London, England. He studied physiology under Sir Michael Foster at Cambridge University. In 1885 he went to Spain to investigate an outbreak of cholera and met Santiago Ramon y Cajal there. He also learned techniques in bacteriology from Robert Koch while studying an outbreak of cholera in Berlin. Sherrington was knighted in 1922.

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