David Ferrier (1843–1928)

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David Ferrier (1843–1928) was born on 13 January 1843 in Woodside, Aberdeen, Scotland, the sixth child of Hannah and David Ferrier. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School and in 1859 he began to study at Aberdeen University, graduating MA with first class honors in classics and philosophy in 1863. As a student, he worked with the psychologist and philosopher Alexander Bain [8, 9]. Following Bain’s advice, in 1864 Ferrier went to Germany and joined Helmholtz and Wundt’s laboratories to investigate sensory psychophysiology [9]. Back in Scotland, in 1865 he started to study medicine, thereafter graduating MB in 1868 at Edinburgh University. Between 1868 and 1870 he was assistant to the general practitioner William Edmund Image in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk [7]. Ferrier worked on the corpora quadrigemina and the comparative anatomy of the superior and inferior colliculi, and his MD thesis was awarded a gold medal [7, 10]. In 1870 he moved to London and was appointed as lecturer in physiology at the Middlesex Hospital [4, 8], and in 1871 became neuropathologist at King’s College Hospital and worked at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, Queen Square. The following year he succeeded to the chair of forensic medicine [4, 8] and met John Hughlings Jackson, who would have a fundamental mentoring influence on him throughout his entire career [5]. …