Lawrence Weiskrantz additional information from Lawrence Weiskrantz. 28 March 1926—27 January 2018

Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz, widely recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, was professor and head of the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford from 1967 until his retirement in 1993. Under his leadership, the department became, and continues to be, one of the world's leading centres for research in cognitive neuroscience. While at Oxford, he led a series of ground-breaking neuropsychological studies of residual cognitive and behavioural processing in patients with amnesia and cortical blindness. It was his demonstration of residual, but unconscious, visually-driven behaviour in patients who were clinically blind from damage to primary visual cortex that is his greatest legacy. He coined the now familiar term ‘Blindsight’ to refer to this remarkable ability. This work established Larry as a leader in research on unconscious processing, showing that operations from the control of action to high-level cognitive functions can unfold without conscious awareness. Because of his pioneering work, the study of the neural substrates of unconscious cognitive processes is now an essential and prominent part of the cognitive neuroscience enterprise worldwide.