David Hubel

David Hunter Hubel was born in Windsor, Ontario, to American parents and raised in Montreal, earning his Bachelor of Science and medical doctorate from McGill University. At Johns Hopkins and later Harvard Medical School, Hubel formed a historic twenty-four-year research partnership with Swedish neurophysiologist Torsten Wiesel.

Using microelectrode recordings, Hubel and Wiesel discovered that neurons in the primary visual cortex respond selectively to specific features of an image—such as lines, edges, and orientations—organized in functional ocular dominance columns. Their discovery revolutionized neuroscience and earned them the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.