Rakić Paško
Akademske titule:
- profesor doktor znanosti
Članstvo u Akademiji:
- dopisni član – Razred za medicinske znanosti (17.05.1990. – …)
Curriculum Vitae
Paško Rakić, an American doctor of Croatian origin, was born on May 15, 1933, in Ruma. He graduated from medical school in 1959 in Belgrade, where he was an assistant at the Department of Pathophysiology from 1960 to 1961. From 1961 to 1962, he specialized in neurosurgery at the Medical School in Belgrade, and then as a scholar he stayed at Harvard Medical School in Boston (1962-1966). Since 1969, he has lived permanently in the U.S., where he first served as an assistant professor of neuropathology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and then a professor of neurobiology and neurology at Yale University, where he was head of the Department of Neurobiology and director of the Kavli Neuroscience Institute (until 2015).
He is engaged in developmental neurobiology studying the structure, mechanism of development and evolution of the cerebral cortex. Particularly significant is his contribution to the knowledge of the development and organization of the cerebral cortex in primates. His work on the method and mechanism of migration of neurons was extremely influential. Based on these results, he also offered a new interpretation of the normal and pathological mechanisms of neuronal migration into man and in mice in special genetic mutations. All this, as a complete scientific opus, allowed P. Rakić to perform an analysis of the principles of organization and mechanism of development of the cerebral cortex at the cellular and molecular level, as well as the application of these results to the research of normal and abnormal brain development in man. The research of Pasko Rakić also opened new areas for in vitro and in vivo experiments in other mammals using the most modern neurobiological methods.
The influence of P. Rakić’s work is exceptional for the entire world neuroscience. During the Lashely Award in 1986, Paško Rakić was described as “a major architect” of our current knowledge of primate brain development. He is an honorary doctor of many universities and has won numerous awards, and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences USA (since 1985), the Australian Academy of Sciences (since 1983, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 1985), the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Literature (since 2008).
He was elected as a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1990.