neurosurgeon university professor neuroscientist
Rakić was born in the Syrmian city of Ruma, Kingdom of Yugoslavia into a Croatian family. His father was originally from Pula, but he studied to become a tax official in Novi Sad. His mother was from Dubrovnik and moved to Vojvodina for a job in the postal service.
Rakić graduated with a degree in medicine (Doctor of Medicine) from the University of Belgrade School of Medicine in Serbia and then embarked on a career as a neurosurgeon. In 1966, he returned to Belgrade and made his first big discovery the same year before obtaining his Doctor of Philosophy in 1969.
Due to his job, he had to move often. His research career began in 1962, with a Fulbright Fellowship at Harvard University. He returned to Harvard at this time.He moved from Harvard to Yale in 1978.
At Yale, he founded and served as Chair of the Department of Neurobiology for 37 years.
He also served as the director of the Kavil Institute for Neuroscience until 2015. According to Nature Medicine, his first experiments required "a special grant, nearly 200 rhesus monkeys and so much radioactive thymidine that manufacturers had to retool their entire production system to provide lieutenant" Rakic injected the monkeys" fetuses with radioactive thymidine at a particular time after conception.
Only replicating cells took up the radioactive label, which enabled Rakic to trace the lineages of brain cells as they were created. He and his team then sliced the brain of each monkey into 7,000 sections for the benefit of future researchers.
Because he used a radiolabel that decays slowly, the slides should be useful for years, and have so far led to more than 24 papers.
Among the discoveries made by Pasko Rakic is the first description of neurogenesis in the subventricular zone. In 1985, Rakic was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. In 1997, he received a doctor honoris causa from the University of Zagreb.
The first hypothesis is the radial unit hypothesis, that in the developing cerebral cortex the cells are created at the base of each column, and that each new cell migrates past its predecessors.
In the related protomap hypothesis, external signals determine cell function as it grows and forms complex connections. In 2008, he was a co-recipient, with Thomas Jessell and Sten Grillner, of the inaugural Kavli Prize for Neuroscience.
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. National Academy of Sciences. Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts]
Since 1985, he has been a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Since 1990, he has been a corresponding member of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In 1994, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the Society for Neuroscience, where he served as president in 1995 and 1996.
He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
M. Patricia Goldman, 1969.
