Torsten N. Wiesel

Abstract Torsten Wiesel was born in 1924 in Uppsala, Sweden, the youngest of five children. In 1947, he began his scientific career in Carl Gustaf Bernhard's laboratory at the Karolinska Institute, where he received his medical degree in 1954. In 1955 he moved to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under Stephen Kuffler. In 1958, he met David Hubel, beginning a collaboration that would last over twenty years. In 1959, Wiesel and Hubel moved to Harvard University. He became an instructor in pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, beginning a 24-year career with the university. He became professor in the new department of neurobiology in 1968 and its chair in 1973. In 1983, Wiesel joined the faculty of Rockefeller University as head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology. He was president of the university from 1991 to 1998.