Giles Skey Brindley, FRS (born 30 April 1926) is a British

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and ...

musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...

and composer, known for his contributions to the physiology of the retina and colour vision, and treatment of

erectile dysfunction Erectile dysfunction (ED), also referred to as impotence, is a form of sexual dysfunction in males characterized by the persistent or recurring inability to achieve or maintain a Human penis, penile erection with sufficient rigidity and durat ...

Medical career

Brindley is perhaps best known for an unusual scientific presentation at the 1983

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

meeting of the

American Urological Association The American Urological Association (AUA) is a professional association in the United States for urology professionals. It has its headquarters at the William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History in Maryland. AUA works with many international o ...

, where he removed his pants to show the audience his chemically induced erection and invited them to inspect it closely. He had injected phenoxybenzamine (using one mL of a mixture of 5 mg of Phenoxybenzamine in 10 mL of saline) into his penis in his hotel room before the presentation. Brindley is also a pioneer in visual prosthetics, developing one of the first visual prostheses in the 1960s. The device was tested on four blind patients, giving them some basic visual sensation, but given the technology of the day further development was impractical. He also developed sacral anterior root stimulators for bladder control in paraplegic patients. Trained in Cambridge and

London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and London Borough of Tow ...

, he saw service in the RAF before taking up academic appointments first in Cambridge and then at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

, authoring more than 100 scientific papers in a variety of subjects. He was doctoral advisor to David Marr who later developed computational theories of vision that had great impact in the neuroscience of vision and

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

, and post-doctoral adviser to Duco Hamasaki, a professor at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Brindley was, for a while, a member of the

Ratio Club The Ratio Club was a small British informal dining club from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics., p. 95. History The idea of the club arose ...

with

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

, Horace Barlow, John Westcott and others from various fields, who met between 1949 and 1952 to discuss brain mechanisms, new technology and related issues. Brindley gave the 1986

Ferrier Lecture The Ferrier Lecture is a Royal Society lectureship given every three years "on a subject related to the advancement of natural knowledge on the structure and function of the nervous system". It was created in 1928 to honour the memory of Sir David ...

, a

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Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

prize lectureship.

Music

Brindley invented a musical instrument in the 1960s, the 'logical

bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...

', an electronically controlled version of the bassoon. It was easier to play than a normal bassoon,Brindley GS (March 1968),″The Logical Bassoon″, ''Galpin Society Journal'', Vol 21. but was never marketed. Brindley also composed music for

wind instrument A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch ...

s, including ''Variations on a Theme by Schoenberg'' and ''The Watermans Daughter'' .

Selected publications

* ''Physiology of the Retina and Visual Pathway''. 2nd edition. Edward Arnold, London, 1970.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brindley, Giles 1926 births Living people Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge British musicologists British composers British physiologists Inventors of musical instruments British medical researchers Neuroprosthetics Fellows of the Royal Society Place of birth missing (living people) Recipients of the St Peter's Medal The Journal of Physiology editors