Sir Giles Skey Brindley, GBE (born circa 1926), is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer.
He made important contributions to the treatment of erectile dysfunction,[1] and is perhaps best known for an unusual scientific presentation at the 1983 Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association, where he removed his trousers to show the audience his chemically induced erection and invited them to inspect it closely.[2][3] He had injected himself with phenoxybenzamine, an alpha blocker, in his hotel room before the presentation.
He is also a pioneer in visual prosthetics, developing one of the first visual prosthesis in the 1960s.[4] 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 spent most of his career at the University of London and London Hospital, authoring more than 100 scientific papers in a variety of subjects. He was doctoral advisor to David Marr (neuroscientist) who later developed computational theories of vision that had great impact in the neuroscience of vision and computer vision.
He held the 1986 Ferrier Lecture, a triennial Royal Society prize lectureship. His knighthood was given for his research in bioengineering.
Brindley invented a musical instrument in the 1960s, the 'logical bassoon', an electronically controlled version of the bassoon. It was easier to play than a normal bassoon, but was never marketed. [5]
He has also composed music for wind instruments, including Variations on a Theme by Schoenberg.