Jean-Pierre Changeux

Jean-Pierre Changeux is a French neuroscientist, born on 6 April 1936, known for research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins, with a focus on allosteric proteins, to the early development of the nervous system and cognitive functions. He is famous in the biological sciences for the MWC model and for the identification and purification of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, and the theory of epigenesis by synapse selection and the global neuronal workspace theory of conscious processing are also notable achievements. He left France for postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965 and 1966 and then at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1967. He taught at the College de France, and among his books is Conversations on Mind, Matter and Mathematics, written with the mathematician Alain Connes, in which he argues that the nervous system functions in a projective rather than reactive style.