Pasko Rakic

Pasko Rakic
Pasko Rakic at the Royal Society admissions day in London in 2016
Born	1933 (age 83–84) Ruma, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Fields	Neuroscience
Institutions	Yale University
Alma mater	University of Belgrade, Harvard University
Notable awards	Kavli Prize (2008)

Pasko Rakic, MD, PhD (Croatian: Paško Rakić) is a Yugoslav-born American neuroscientist, who presently works in the Yale School of Medicine Department of Neuroscience in New Haven, CT. His main research interest is in the development and evolution of the human brain. He was the founder and served as Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at Yale for 37 years, and was founder and Director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience for 10 years. He is best known for elucidating the mechanisms involved in development of the cerebral cortex. In 2008, Rakic shared the inaugural Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Thomas Jessell and Stan Grillner. He is currently the Dorys McConell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience, leads an active research laboratory, and serves on Advisory Boards and Scientific Councils of a number of Institutions and Research Foundations.

Pasko Rakic was born on May 15, 1933 in Ruma (formerly Kingdom of Yugoslavia). His father, Toma, was Croatian, originally from Pula (Istria, at that time part of Italy), but emigrated to Yugoslavia, where in the town of Novi Sad (province of Vojvodina) he studied to become an accountant and tax official. His mother, Juliana Todoric, of Serbian and Slovakian dissent was born in Dubrovnik (Dalmatia) and moved to Ruma, where they met and got married in 1929.

Due to the nature of his father’s job as Director of Regional Tax Services, the family moved to different towns every few years. Finally, their daughter, Vera, and son, Pasko, completed Gimnasium (High School) in the town of Sremska Mitrovica. Vera eventually graduated in mathematics from Belgrade University, and Pasko obtained his medical degree (MD) from the University of Belgrade School of Medicine, where he embarked on a career as a neurosurgeon.