| ~ 1700 B.C. |
First written record about the nervous system (The Edwin Smith ãsurgical papyrusä) |
| ~ 500 B.C. |
Alcmaion of Crotona dissects sensory nerves
|
| ~ 400 B.C. |
Hippocrates states that the brain is involved with sensation and is the seat of intelligence |
| 387 B.C. |
Plato teaches that the brain is the seat of mental processes |
| 177 A.D. |
Galen delivers his lecture "On the Brain" |
| ~ 1000 |
Alhazen compares the eye to a camera-like device
|
| 1573 |
Girolamo Mercuriali writes De nervis opticis , a description of optic nerve anatomy |
| 1583 |
Felix Platter states that the lens only focuses light and that the retina is where images are formed |
| 1604 |
Johannes Kepler describes inverted retinal image |
| 1782 |
Francesco Buzzi identifies the fovea
|
| 1786 |
Samuel Thomas Sommering describes the optic chiasm |
| 1844 |
Robert Remak provides first illustration of 6-layered cortex |
| 1851 |
Hermann von Helmholtz invents ophthalmoscope
|
| 1854 |
Louis P. Gratiolet describes convolutions of the cerebral cortex |
| 1855 |
Bartolomeo Panizza shows the occipital lobe is essential for vision
|
| 1862 |
Hermann Snellen invents the eyechart with letters to test vision |
| 1875 |
Richard Caton is first to record electrical activity from the brain |
| 1876 |
David Ferrier publishes "The Functions of the Brain" |
| 1876 |
Franz Christian Boll discovers rhodopsin |
| 1879 |
Hermann Munk presents a detailed anatomy of the optic chiasm |
| 1887 |
Adolf Eugen Fick makes the first contact lens out of glass for vision correction |
| 1906 |
Golgi and Cajal are awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of the nervous system
|
| 1909 |
Korbinian Brodmann describes 52 discrete functional cortical areas
|
| 1944 |
Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser share the Nobel Prize for work on the functions of single nerve fiber |
| 1953 |
Stephen Kuffler publishes work on center-surround, on-off organization of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields |
| 1967 |
Ragnar Arthur Granit, Halden Keffer Hartline and George Wald share the Nobel Prize for work on the mechanisms of vision. Hartline's work was done using the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus.
 |
| 1981 |
David Hunter Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel are awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on the visual system
|
