Benedict Delisle Burns

Benedict Delisle Burns, neuroscientist: born London 22 February 1915; Research Assistant, National Institute for Medical Research 1945-49, Head, Division of Physiology and Pharmacology 1967-76; Associate Professor of Physiology, McGill University 1950-58, Professor 1958-67, Chairman, Department of Physiology 1965-67; FRS 1968; External Staff, Anatomy Department, Bristol University 1976- 80, Honorary Professor of Neurobiology 1977-80; Visitor, Division of Neurobiology, Newcastle University 1980-2001; married 1938 Angela Ricardo (four sons; marriage dissolved), 1954 Monika Kasputis (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died Hexham, Northumberland 6 September 2001.

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B. Delisle Burns

Benedict Delisle Burns, born in London in 1915, attended Cambridge University and graduated in 1939 from the University College Hospital medical school. His forbears were land-owners in the island of St. Kitts, and the family produced a number of interesting men, including Ben Burns’ father – a catholic priest who lost his faith, married and became a distinguished historian; an uncle in the British colonial service who was knighted for his achievements; and another uncle who was the long-time Secretary of the British Communist Party. As a scientist, Ben Burns was imaginative and somewhat unconventional. After World War II operational research in North Africa, he joined Sir Lindor Brown’s group at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, where he participated in research on neuromuscular transmission and in the process familiarized himself with a range of electrophysiological techniques. In 1950 he joined McGill’s Physiology Department, where he spent sixteen productive years investigating discharge patterns and neuronal relationships in the mammalian cerebral cortex and brainstem respiratory centers. Furthermore, he initiated a number of highly original cross-disciplinary studies with, on the one hand, members of D.O. Hebb’s research group at McGill’s Psychology Department; and, on the other hand, with Albert Uttley’s group at the Autonomics Division of the National Physical Laboratories in London, England, with a view of elucidating the neural mechanisms of learning, and the physiological bases of memory and attention. In this, he was much influenced by hypotheses regarding the probabilistic nature of neuroelectric activity, and the consequent necessity for statistical methods of data analysis and quantification – seminal ideas developed in the 1950’s by MIT’s Communications Biophysics Group; and by some of the then current theories of synaptic plasticity based on the computation of conditional probabilities by neuronal networks. Within this context, he enjoyed and promoted the design and construction of (at the time) novel electronic instrumentation for the collection, analysis and display of experimental neuroelectric data. He was a stimulating and popular teacher, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and during his stay at McGill was surrounded by a lively group of graduate students, including - amongst others - T.V.P. Bliss (of subsequent LTP fame), Bernice Grafstein (who much later made fundamental contributions toward the elucidation of axonal transport mechanisms, and served a term as President of the Society for Neuroscience), and George Mandl (see below). During his last year at McGill, Ben Burns served as Chairman of the Physiology Department. He subsequently in 1966 returned to the National Institute for Medical Research in the U.K. to succeed W. Feldberg as Head of its Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and later (1976) was director of a research group at the University of Bristol. He retired formally in 1980, but remained for several years an active investigator at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1968, he published a monograph (The Uncertain Nervous System) in which he tried to spell out his ideas regarding “the interdisciplinary nature of central neurophysiology, a subject in which progress has come to depend upon some knowledge of classical physiology, experimental psychology, applied mathematics, and electronic engineering”. The same year, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS). He died on September 6, 2001.

Sources:

1. F.C. MacIntosh, The McGill Department of Physiology, 1950-1970 (Informal Notes for S.B. Frost).

2. B.D. Burns, The Uncertain Nervous System, E. Arnold, London, 1968

3. G. Mandl, personal recollections.