Richard Frackowiak

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Richard Stanislaus Joseph Frackowiak, born 26 March 1950 in London, is a British and French neurologist and neuroscientist. He is best known for helping develop neuroimaging, founding the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) at University College London (UCL), and as one of the initiators of the Human Brain Project in 2013—a major European effort coordinated by EPFL to advance neuroscience, computing, and brain medicine.

From a family with strong wartime stories, Frackowiak grew up in London, learned Polish, and decided to pursue medicine after being inspired by a family doctor who had worked as a surgeon for the resistance. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and completed his medical training at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. He earned an MD in 1983 for work on measuring cerebral blood flow with PET. His career included leading the neurology service at Hammersmith Hospital (1984–1993), a joint neurology chair at Hammersmith and UCL Institute of Neurology (from 1990), and in 1994 founding the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience and the FIL. He later led the UCL Institute of Neurology (1998–2002) and served in senior roles at UCL and ENS Paris, while developing international collaborations.

In 2013 he became involved with the Blue Brain Project at EPFL and helped launch the Human Brain Project, serving as medical co-director. He retired from clinical work and HBP activities in 2015 but remains active as a professor at EPFL and a visitor at ENS Paris; he is also professor emeritus at UCL. In 2016 he chaired Science Europe’s medical sciences committee, advocating for EU data-protection exemptions to aid research. Frackowiak’s research helped establish functional brain mapping with PET and fMRI, showing brain plasticity and how the brain reorganizes after injury. He co-edited the textbook Human Brain Function (1997, 2004). As of January 2021, his h-index stood at 210.