Wiesel, Torsten N (1924– )

Swedish neuroscientist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1981 with David H Hubel for work on visual perception. They shared the prize with Roger W Sperry for his work on the functional specialization of the brain's cerebral hemispheres.

The signal that the eye sends to the brain can be regarded as a code which only the brain can interpret. Wiesel and Hubel succeeded in breaking the code. They did this by tapping the signals from the nerve cells in the various cell layers of the brain. They were able to show how various parts of the image on the retina of the eye are read out and interpreted by the brain. They also showed that the ability to interpret messages from the retina develop soon after birth.

Wiesel was born in Uppsala. In 1954, he began his research career at the Karolinska Institute, Uppsala, undertaking basic neurophysiological studies. The following year he was invited to the USA as a postdoctoral fellow at the Wilmer Institute, Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, Maryland. Hubel joined the laboratory in 1958, beginning a collaboration which lasted 20 years. Wiesel and Hubel moved with their professor, Stephen Kuffler, to the Harvard Medical School in 1959. In 1973 Wiesel was appointed head of the department of neurobiology at Harvard.