Degree in medicine from Cambridge. Worked as a demonstrator in anatomy and lecturer in physiology at Cambridge. Became senior lecturer in physiology at University of London in 1952, and in the same year became professor of physiology at the Institute of Psychiatry until 1962. He was also a visiting professor at the Universities of Montreal, Canada, and Berkeley, California. He then became professor of anatomy at Oxford in 1962. Achieved distinction in particular for his work on the frontiers between neurology and endocrinology, in particular in relation to the control of the pituitary gland by the nervous system. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 and appointed a CBE in 1965.