George Paxinos
George Paxinos AO DSc FASSA FAA FRSN FAHMS (, born 6 December 1944) is a Greek Australian neuroscientist, born in Ithaca, Greece. He completed his BA in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. After a postdoctoral year at Yale University, he moved to the School of Psychology of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is currently an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia and Scientia Professor of Medical Sciences at the University of New South Wales. He is a fellow of  the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. He was also awarded a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2019. Paxinos is a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens, and the only Australian with this award. Personal life. Although known for his impact within neuroscience, Paxinos has a history of campaigning for the environment. For more than 10 years (1989 - 2000), Paxinos was the leading proponent of light rail for the city of Sydney. His motivation had been to reduce  atmospheric pollution from automobile use. He founded the Light Rail Association and, through this organization, produced a plan for a comprehensive light rail system to complement the heavy rail network of Sydney. He organized demonstrations to preserve tramway infrastructure for a future light rail system. One of these demonstrations was a march on the Harbour Bridge that attracted more than 400 people. He also founded the Randwick Environment Group and the Coastal Walk Group – groups engaged in local activities in Randwick and Tamarama/Bronte, respectively. He wrote his novel Κατ’ Εικόνα to sensitize people on environmental issues. He stood as  candidate for the Australian Cyclists Party for the 2015 state elections in New South Wales. Research. Paxinos has published 54 research books, 1 textbook, 165 refereed journal articles, 30 book chapters, and 17 CDROMs. He has identified 94 nuclei (areas) in the rat and human brains. Comparing rats and humans, he has identified 64 homologous nuclei. He has identified 180 nuclei and homologies in birds. He was the first to produce a reliable stereotaxic space for the brain of rats, mice, and primates — a factor fuelling the explosion in neuroscience research since the 1980s. He developed the first comprehensive nomenclature  and ontology for the brain, covering humans, birds, and developing mammals. Further, Paxinos constructed the most frequently cited atlases of the brain and spinal cord of rats, mice, monkeys, birds and humans. He also published developmental atlases of rats and mice, and the only comprehensive MRI/DTI atlas of the rat brain Impact. He produced two paradigm shifts in the field of neuroscience. (i) During a sabbatical at Cambridge in 1977, he learned immunohistochemistry and applied it for the first time in brain atlases. That is, he used the chemical phenotype of neurons as a criterion for identifying brain regions  and for establishing brain homologies across experimental animals and humans. (ii) In his avian brain atlas, he used neuromeric criteria to delineate the entire brain for the first time. Most scientists working on the relation between the human brain and neurologic or psychiatric diseases, or animal models of these diseases, use his maps and concepts of brain organization. His human brain atlases are the most accurate ones for identification of deep structures and are used in surgical theatres. In community impact, his 2018 discovery of the human endorestiform nucleus was widely reported. Citation record and grant support. In the field  of neuroscience, he is the author of the most cited publication internationally ("The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates"; Paxinos and Watson, 1986.). This is the third most cited book in science after "Molecular Cloning" and the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (68,471 citations over its 7 editions). Currently is ranked 14th in the 100 Most Cited Books of All-Time – BooksIcon.com In total, his works have been cited 109,177 times, with 80,070 as first author. Paxinos holds two National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grants and is a chief investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence  for Integrative Brain Function and of the NIH grant "Towards quantitative cell type-based mapping of the whole mouse brain". Until 2013, he held an NHMRC Australia Fellowship ($4 million) with UNSW support ($1.5 million) as well as two grants from NIH (USD150,000 and USD528,951). He was a member of the first International Consortium for Brain Mapping. Unlike most academic books, some of his atlases have been commercially successful; he was able to obtain grants for his laboratory from the publishers development to fund eight prizes from book royalties. Editorial boards of international refereed journals. Paxinos has served  on 16 journal editorial boards, including "Frontiers in Neuroanatomy" (2008–present), "Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience & Mental Health (2018 - present), Brain Structure and Function" (2007–present), "Translational Neuroscience" (2008–present), "ISRN Neurology" (2010–present), "PLoS ONE, for the SBMT NeuroMapping and Therapeutics Collection" (2012–present), "Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy" (2004–2014), "BrainNavigator" (2009–12), "Neuroscience and Bio-behavioral Reviews" (2000–11), "Journal of Comparative Neurology" "Human Brain Mapping", "Posters in Neuroscience", "Journal fur Hirnforschung", "International Neuropsychiatric Disease Journal," and "NeuroImage". Contribution to the Profession. Honorary Life Memberships Conference Organizing Contribution to teaching. He wrote the internationally used textbook "The Brain: an Introduction to Functional  Neuroanatomy" (2010) which is used in the Australian and New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge and has contributed to Australia’s dominance in the International Brain Bee Challenge competition. He taught psychology for 27 years and served on the Academic Board and Council of UNSW. He is currently supervising two postdoctoral fellows and a PhD student. Nina Kondelos Prize. The Nina Kondelos Prize has been awarded annually since 2007 to a female neuroscientist for making significant contributions to neuroscience research. The award is named after the late sister of Professor George Paxinos and was initially funded by him. George Paxinos George