Torsten N. Wiesel (1924- )

Awarded the Prize “for discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system.”

American neurobiologist. Wiesel was born on June 3, 1924 at Uppsala, Sweden. He received his M.D. from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1954. Then he went to the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in 1955. In 1959 he joined Harvard Medical School, becoming head of the Department of Neurobiology in 1973. In 1983, he moved to the Rockefeller University as Vincent Brook Astor Professor, establishing a new Laboratory of Neurobiology. In 1991, he became president of Rockefeller. Since 1994, he has served as chairman of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Human Rights. In 1995 he became chairman of the board of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center.