Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain

Walter Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain (23 October 1895 – 29 December 1966) was a British neurologist. He was principal author of the standard work of neurology, Brain's Diseases of the Nervous System, and longtime editor of the eponymous neurological medical journal titled Brain. He is also eponymised with "Brain's reflex", a reflex exhibited by humans when assuming the quadripedian position.

Career

Brain studied medicine at New College, Oxford, where he obtained his BM BCh in 1922 and a DM in 1925, and specialised in neurology. Apart from his clinical practice, he was a member on a large number of government committees pertaining to physical and mental health, and was involved in the care of Winston Churchill on the latter's deathbed in 1965.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1931 and was President of the society from 1950 to 1956.

He was knighted in 1952, made a baronet in 1954, and in 1962 created Baron Brain, of Eynsham in the County of Oxford. In March, 1964 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. ^[1]

Family

He married Stella Langdon-Down and had a daughter, Janet, and two sons, Christopher (b. 1926) and Michael (b. 1928). Christopher succeeded him as the 2nd Baron Brain. In 1954 Janet married Dr Leonard Arthur, tried for the murder of a baby in 1981 but acquitted.

Religious beliefs

He became a Quaker in 1931 and gave the Swarthmore Lecture in 1944, ‘Man, society and religion’, in which he stressed the importance of a social conscience.

References

• The Peerage
• Roster of physician writers
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by George Pickering, Brain, Walter Russell, first Baron Brain (1895–1966), revised online edn, Oct 2006 [1], accessed 8 Dec 2006.