Graeme Clark (doctor)

Graeme Clark (doctor)

Graeme Milbourne Clark AC (born 16 August 1935 in Camden, New South Wales) is an Australian doctor. He was a key figure in the research and development of the Bionic Ear – a multiple-channel Cochlear Implant.

He was a good athlete and especially loved cricket. He attended Sydney Boys High School. He then specialised in ear nose and throat surgery at the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital and obtained a fellowship in 1964 from the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Clark then returned to Australia and became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and in 1969 completed his PhD at the University of Sydney on “Middle Ear & Neural Mechanisms in Hearing and in the Management of Deafness”. At the same time, he completed a Master of Surgery thesis on “The Principles of the Structural Support of the Nose and its Application to Nasal and Septal Surgery’. In 1976 he returned to England to study at the University of Keele, and to learn more about speech science, as this knowledge was also essential for enabling him to work on converting complicated speech signals into electrical stimuli of the hearing nerve.