Edward George Gray
Edward George Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 January 1924 Pontypool, Monmouthshire, UK |
| Died | 14 August 1999 (aged 75) Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK |
| Alma mater | Aberystwyth University |
| Known for | Electron microscopy of synapses |
| Spouse | May Rautiainen (m. 1953) |
| Children | 2 sons, Tim and Peter |
| Parents |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroanatomy |
| Institutions | University College London |
| Doctoral advisors | E.G. Healey, J.Z. Young |
Edward George Gray (1924–1999) was a British anatomist and neuroscientist who pioneered the investigation of neural tissues with transmission electron microscopy.[1] During his professional career, Gray made a number of profound contributions to our knowledge of synaptic structure.[2] To this day, chemical synapses are classified according to their ultrastructure as Gray type 1 (asymmetric) or type 2 (symmetric), corresponding to excitatory and inhibitory synapses, respectively.[1][3][4]
Early life and education
Gray's grandparents moved to the United States, and his father, William Gray was born in Alabama in 1893, but the family returned to Wales at the end of 19th century. Edward George's parents, William Gray and Charlotte Atkinson, met in Belfast while William served there in British military. The couple later married and had 5 children, E. George being the eldest, born in Pontypool on 11 January 1924. The family moved to Abergavenny around 1932. In his childhood, George Gray acquired interest in natural history and science, which was stimulated by his father and grandfather from whom he got a small microsope and many books. One of his primary school teachers introduced him to study of electricity and radio, and George learned Morse code by himself. Also at school he gained access to better microscopes, and his interest in biology continued. He also learned musical composition and sang in a school choir, as well as painting, using water colours. George's further education was hampered because the family could not afford a university tuition. As a young man, he worked as a bank clerk. During World War II, E. George Gray served in the Royal Navy in the rank of Able Seaman on a destroyer. After the war, a military grant enabled him to resume his education, and Gray studied zoology, marine biology and helminthology at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he obtained his BSc degree in 1952. Gray studied for his PhD in Aberystwyth, investigating the effects of denervation of melanophores in minnows. During that time, George met May Eine Rautianen, a student from Finland, and they married in 1953. The young couple moved to London, and George continued his PhD study, working on muscle spindle innervation, using optical microscopy, and then electron microscopy, which was a very new technology at the time.[4]
Career and research
Edward George Gray came to the Anatomy Department at University College London (UCL) in 1955 to work as a postdoctoral assistant to John Z. Young. In 1959, he published a seminal paper on the synaptic structure in mammalian neocortex, describing a specialized organelle inside dendritic spines that he named the spine apparatus.[5] In 1962, he published a method for isolating synaptosomes which are isolated axon terminals purified by centrifugation.[6] In 1970, he described the clathrin coats of recycling vesicles and proposed that the coats provide a scaffold that determines the vesicle size.[7] He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976.[4]
In 1979, Gray was named an honorary member of the American Association for Anatomy.[8]
Personal life
In his later years, E. George Gray suffered from severe clinical depression.[9]
References
- ^ a b Lieberman, A. R. (2 September 1999). "Obituary: George Gray". The Independent. Archived from the original on 20 September 2025. Retrieved 20 September 2025.
- ^ Guillery, R (1 December 2000). "Early electron microscopic observations of synaptic structures in the cerebral cortex: a view of the contributions made by George Gray (1924–1999)". Trends in Neurosciences. 23 (12): 594–598. doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01635-0. PMID 11137148. S2CID 23484682.
- ^ Squire, Larry R.; et al., eds. (2013). Fundamental neuroscience (4th ed.). Amsterdam Boston Heidelberg: Elsevier, Academic Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-12-385870-2.
- ^ a b c Guillery, R.W. (1 December 2002). "Edward George Gray. 11 January 1924 – 14 August 1999". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 48: 151–165. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2002.0009. ISSN 0080-4606.
- ^ Gray, E. G. (1959). "Axo-somatic and axo-dendritic synapses of the cerebral cortex: an electron microscope study". Journal of Anatomy. 93 (Pt 4): 420–433. ISSN 0021-8782. PMC 1244535. PMID 13829103.
- ^ Gray, E. G.; Whittaker, V. P. (1962). "The isolation of nerve endings from brain: an electron-microscopic study of cell fragments derived by homogenization and centrifugation". Journal of Anatomy. 96 (Pt 1): 79–88. ISSN 0021-8782. PMC 1244174. PMID 13901297.
- ^ Gray, E. G.; Willis, R. A. (1 December 1970). "On synaptic vesicles, complex vesicles and dense projections". Brain Research. 24 (2): 149–168. doi:10.1016/0006-8993(70)90097-1. ISSN 0006-8993. PMID 4099165.
- ^ Pauly, John E., ed. (1987). The American Association of Anatomists, 1888-1987: essays on the history of anatomy in America and a report on the membership--past and present (1st ed.). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 978-0-683-06800-9.
- ^ Gray, E. George (1983). "Severe Depression: A Patient's Thoughts". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 143 (4): 319–322. doi:10.1192/bjp.143.4.319. ISSN 0007-1250. PMID 6626849. S2CID 10598570.