William Albert Hugh Rushton, FRS

 

1901-1980. Professor of Physiology. Rushton

Educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Emmanuel and Pembroke Colleges, Cambridge, Rushton was a Fellow of Trinity from 1938 until his death in 1980.

His main interest lay in colour vision and his Principle of Univariance is of seminal importance in the study of perception. 

In his 1972 lecture "Pigments and signals in colour vision" he stated the principle of univariance thus: "The output of a receptor depends upon its quantum catch, but not upon what quanta are caught."

This means that one and the same visual receptor cell can be excited by different combinations of wavelength and intensity, so that the brain cannot know the colour of that point of the retinal picture.

  • 1931 Beit Memorial Fellowship
  • 1948 Fellow of the Royal Society
  • 1968 Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • 1969 Honorary DSc of Case Western Reserve University
  • 1970 Royal Medal of the Royal Society
  • 1970 President of the Society for Psychical Research

 

Memorial inscription Translation

WILLIAM ALBERT HUGH RUSHTON

HVIVS COLLEGII PER ANNOS XLII SOCIVS PER XXV LECTOR IN ACADEMIA PROFESSOR CREATVS MVLTAS PER TERRAS INNOTVIT SENSVVM HVMANORVM INDAGATOR ACVTISSIMVS QVI NERVOS QVI OCVLOS SVMMA PHYSIOLOGIAE SCIENTIA INVESTIGAVIT
IDEM VIR MVSICAE PERITVS TAM DE ARTE MVSICA QVAM DE RERVM NATVRA MIRO ACUMINE MIRA ALACRITATE DISSEREBAT.

OBIIT A.S. MCMLXXX AETATIS SVAE LXXIX.


 

Fellow of the College for forty-two years, Lecturer for twenty-five years, and Professor in the University, William Albert Hugh Rushton was renowned throughout the world as a most perceptive researcher into the human senses, who investigated the nervous system and the eye with a full command of the science of physiology.  He was also an expert in music, which he discussed with the same remarkable keenness and enthusiasm which he showed in science.  He died in 1980 at the age of seventy-eight.

William Albert Hugh Rushton

Brass located on the south wall of the Ante-Chapel. 
Inscription text by J.S. Morrison, F.H. Sandbach and H.J. Easterling.

 

Rushton brass

 

 

 

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