McGill neuroscientist wins $1M research prize

A world-renowned neuroscientist from Montreal is one of four recipients of a prestigious international award.

McGill University Prof. Brenda Milner has won the International Balzan Prize for 2009. The prize is one million Swiss francs, or about $1 million Cdn, for her groundbreaking research into cognitive neuroscience and how we remember.

"For her pioneering studies of the role of the hippocampus in the formation of memory and her identification of different kinds of memory system," said Monday's citation from the Balzan Foundation in Milan.

The other winners were:

• British literary scholar Terrence Cave of St. John's College, Oxford.
• Italian Paolo Rossi of the University of Florence for the history of science.
• Michael Gratzel from the Federal Polytechnical School in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the science of new materials.

Half of the winnings must be designated for research.

In 2005, Milner won the Gairdner Awards for medical research, also known as the "Baby Nobels." Over the past 50 years, one in every four winners has gone on to become a Nobel laureate. In2004, she was promoted to a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Nobel laureate Eric Kandel credited Milner with merging the fields of neurobiology and psychology to form a new field of human cognition and has had broad implications for the treatment of patients.

Milner has been teaching and researching for nearly 60 years.