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EmailMay 16, 2008
For Immediate Release
Baycrest senior scientist elected to The Royal Society
Dr. Fergus Craik, PhD, FRSC
Toronto, ONT – Dr. Fergus Craik, a senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute who is internationally recognized for his experimental study of human memory processes, has been elected a Fellow of The Royal Society, it was announced today in London.
Dr.Craik is among 44 new Fellows and eight Foreign Members elected this year to the prestigious national science academy of the UK and Commonwealth. Fellows come from the fields of science, engineering and technology and are recognized by their peers for making landmark contributions in their respective area.
“I was surprised but delighted to receive the news from London, and have to say that given my British background I find the honour particularly gratifying,” said Dr. Craik from his Toronto office at the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest.
“It is worth pointing out that in the group of 30 scientists and associate scientists at the Rotman Institute, there are now three of us with the letters FRS (Endel Tulving and Tim Shallice are the other two), and six scientists who are Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. Very clearly the group is extremely well regarded both in Canada and internationally for our basic research work in cognition and neuroscience.”
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1935, Dr. Craik has contributed immensely over the past 40 years to the understanding of how human memory works – how it encodes new memories and retrieves stored information – and the effects of aging on those processes. His research has found that certain types of cognitive processes hold up better than others in later years of life. He has published extensively in scientific journals, written book chapters, and co-edited nine books, including The Oxford Handbook of Memory (with co-editor and Gairdner Award recipient Endel Tulving). It is considered by many leading scholars and scientists in the neuroscience field to be one of most important books on memory ever published.
“The great strides being made in understanding aging's impact on memory and other cognitive functions in older adults are in no small part attributable to the outstanding
research contributions of Dr. Fergus Craik. He is well deserving of this fine honour from the Royal Society,” said Dr. Donald Stuss, vice-president of Research and Academic Education at Baycrest.
“Baycrest and the Rotman Research Institute have been privileged to be the academic home for some of the greatest minds in cognitive neuroscience,” said Dr. William Reichman, president and CEO of Baycrest. “As one of our most creative and inspired scientists, Fergus Craik has made remarkable contributions to our field. All of us at Baycrest are proud of this distinguished honour being bestowed upon one of our own.”
Dr. Craik’s current research is looking at the impact of contextual supports in the environment for helping older adults improve their performance in the encoding and retrieval of everyday information. This work holds promise for developing workable techniques to counteract memory failure in older people.
Dr. Craik is University Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto, the recipient of several distinguished international Fellowships and Awards, and past holder of the Dr. Max and Gianna Glassman Chair in Neuropsychology at U of T (1996-2000).
The Royal Society
Founded in 1660, The Royal Society is composed of distinguished scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK, other Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland. Fellows are elected for life and designate themselves through the use of the letters FRS after their names. There are several Nobel Prize winners among the Fellowship, past and present. Previous Fellows have included mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, English architect Christopher Wren and British scientist Charles Darwin, who wrote The Origin of Species.
Baycrest
Baycrest, an academic health sciences centre fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, is internationally-renowned for its care of aging adults and its excellence in aging brain research (through the Rotman Research Institute), clinical interventions and treatments, and promising cognitive rehabilitation strategies.
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For more information on this press release or to interview Dr. Fergus Craik, please contact:
Kelly Connelly, Senior Media Officer
The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest
416-785-2432, kconnelly@baycrest.org
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