Jon Driver studied Experimental
Psychology at Oxford before taking up a University Lectureship at Cambridge. Within eight years of obtaining his DPhil
doctoral degree he was a Professor at Birkbeck, and from 1998 a Professor at
the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), one of the world’s leading centres
of research into the brain basis of cognition.
He was Director of the ICN from 2004-2009, before being one of a small
handful of researchers from all across the sciences to be selected for a prestigious
Royal Society Anniversary Research Professorship in 2009. He died this week, tragically young at the
age of 49, leaving a young family.
I never worked with Jon
directly, and wouldn’t say that I knew him particularly well. More comprehensive and better informed
assessments of his life and career will no doubt be found elsewhere. However, the times I did spend with Jon were
sufficient to leave a lasting impression on me, which is what I wanted to
reflect on in these brief thoughts.
