Nobel Prize – O'Keeffe Clan

John O Keeffe – 2014 Nobel Prize Winner
by Patricia O Keeffe, Newmarket

John O Keeffe was born in New York to Irish parents in 19th November, 1939. His father came from Scarteen Lower, Newmarket, County Cork. His mother came from County Mayo. He still has family living in Scarteen Lower, Newmarket today.

He went to an elite all boy’s Catholic high School on the Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York. He pursued his college studies in City College of New York in 1963 and he progressed onto McGill University, Montreal in 1964 for his Masters of Arts-Psychology, in 1967 he achieved his PhD in Physiological Psychology also at McGill University.

Today he is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College of London, and also is a Director of Sainsbury Welcome Centre. He is today actively involved in Research and has many Published works in the field of Neurosciences since 1969. Most of his research relates to the mind’s nerve cells and their workings.
He jointly published a book “The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map” in 1978.

John O Keeffe has continued his research which has resulted in him jointly winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Norwegian couple May Britt and Edward Moser. The Nobel Prize was won for discovering the brain’s “inner GPS” which helps us humans to know where we are, where we have being to and how find our way in through the world.

It is believed that this discovery will help in the understanding of the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss that affects people with Alzheimer’s disease and strokes. Through the discovery of the internal GPS of the brain the cognitive functions of planning, memory and thinking will give scientist more information and create new findings.

In December 2014 University College Cork recognised Professor John O Keeffe’s immense input to neuroscience by making him an Honorary Doctor of Science when he attended to give a lecture to neuroscientists titled “The Hippocampus in Health & Disease”.