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When neurologist Vilayanur S Ramachandran was 12, he told his father he wanted to be a scientist. His father suggested that he go to medical school instead, because doctors are assured of a living wage, scientists are not.
Ramachandran obediently went to medical school and is still a doctor. But he has made his name as a neuroscientist. He is director, Centre for Brain and Cognition, and distinguished professor, psychology and neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor of biology at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.
Newsweek named him a member of its 'Century Club' of one of the 100 most important people to watch this century. Public Broadcasting Station made a two-hour special of his critically acclaimed book, Phantoms in the Brain.
Ramachandran recently spoke at the State University of New York at Albany about his latest book, The Tell-Tale Brain. He also discussed some of his findings from treating brain injury, autism and phantom pain following limb amputations.
The small auditorium could not accommodate the roughly 350 people who turned up for the event. That he has a following outside his area of expertise was clear in the kind of questions he had to field. They went from doubts about autism, depression, stroke and the recovery of United States Representative Gabrielle Gifford from Arizona who was shot in the head (he assessed her chances as being very good), to more detailed questions about the brain itself.
In his book, Ramachandran frequently addresses a network of cells in the human brain known as mirror neurons, cells that become active both when a subject performs an action or watches anyone else perform the same action.
Sridhar Kadiyala, a graduate student in neuroscience at the Albany Medical Centre said he found Ramachandran an excellent speaker while yet being very precise in his use of language.
Jay Mehdi, who minors in the same subject, agreed.
"He's good at what he does and I thought he spoke well," he said.