David H. Hubel - Biography

Biography

Hubel was born in Windsor, Ontario to American parents in 1926. His paternal grandfather emigrated as a child to the U.S.A. from the Bavarian town of Nördlingen. In 1929, his family moved to Montreal where he spent his formative years. From age six to eighteen, he attended Strathcona Academy in Outremont, Quebec about which he said, " much to the excellent teachers there, especially to Julia Bradshaw, a dedicated, vivacious history teacher with a memorable Irish temper, who awakened me to the possibility of learning how to write readable English." He studied mathematics and physics at McGill University, and then entered medical school there. In 1954, he moved to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an assistant resident in Neurology. He was later drafted by the army and served at Walter Reed Hospital. There, he began recording from the primary visual cortex of sleeping and awake cats. At Walter Reed, he invented the modern metal microelectrode out of Stoner-Mudge lacquer and tungsten, and the modern hydraulic microdrive, for which he had to learn rudimentary machinists skills to produce. In 1958, he moved to Johns Hopkins and began his collaborations with Wiesel, and discovered orientation selectivity and columnar organization in visual cortex. One year later, he joined the faculty of Harvard University.