Ragnar Granit

Granit tied the nuptials with Baroness Marguerite (Daisy) Emma Bruun, daughter of the State Councillor, Baron Theodor Bruun and Mary Edith Henley. They were blessed with a son, Michael W. Th. Granit.

Granit breathed his last on March 12, 1991 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ragnar Arthur Granit was born on October 30, 1900 in the parish of Helsinge, Finland to Arthur Wilhelm Granit and Albertina Helena Malmberg. He was the eldest son of the couple and had two younger sisters, Greta and Ingrid Granit. His father was a forestry officer.

When he was very young, the Granit family moved to the neighboring Helsingfors, where his father opened a firm that dealt with sylviculture and forest produce.

Young Granit was first educated at the high school, Swedish Normallyceum. Completing his preliminary education, he enrolled at the Helsingfors University from where he matriculated in 1919. Meanwhile in 1918, while still at school, Granit took part in Finland’s War of Liberation. He was decorated with the Cross of Freedom IV.

Post matriculation, Granit considered a career in law studies and for the same, even took up a summer course at Abo Akademi University in philosophy and Finnish legal language. The course had a deep orientation for psychology, a subject that interested and captivated Granit.

Propelled by the love for psychology, Granit resolved to make a career in the same. However, a stroll with uncle, Lars Ringborn changed Granit’s mind. The latter advised Granit that reading psychology alone would be of no use if he didn’t have knowledge about biology. The conversation deeply impacted Granit who zeroed on studying medicine.

Following his doctorate, Granit traveled to Oxford in 1928 to train under Sir Charles Sherrington. He wanted to understand vision and in the course realized the fact that the retina itself functions as a nerve centre which processes visual information and transmits already processed information to the brain's visual centre.

From 1929 to 1931, Granit was a Fellow in Medical Physics at the Johnson Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania. Therein, he continued bioelectric research as a researcher in medical physics, using the electric measuring technique developed by Edgar Adrian.

In 1932, he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of the Rockfelller Foundation. In 1935, Granit returned to his alma mater, University of Helsinki, where he held the office of Professor of Physiology. Two years later, in 1937, he was formally appointed to the post.

At the University of Helsinki, Granit continued with his electroretinogram bioelectric research on visual nerve and theretina. He worked on Sherrington’s idea that the effect of nerve signals on next nerve cell via synapse can be activating or inhibiting. He became interested in demonstrating the fact that the retina contained inhibiting synapses. For the same, he performed an experiment on a single nerve cell.

He pursued further research on the physiological basis of colour perception. His studies showed that some nerve fibres of the eye were not particularly selective in the case of colour. In fact, they reacted in the same way over the whole spectrum. However, there were other fibres that clearly distinguished between colours. In 1937 Granit published these research results, confirming the theory of colour perception.

Granit’s most significant contribution came in as a researcher at Oxford and Helsinki. He is famous till date for his research into the internal electrical impulses that takes place as the eye processes vision. He came up with the theory of colour vision in which he proposed that other than the three kinds of photosensitive cones (the colour receptors in the retina, which respond to different portions of the light spectrum) there are some optic nerve fibres that are sensitive to the whole spectrum, while others respond to a narrow band of light wavelengths and are thus colour-specific. Granit also proved that light could constrain as well as rouse impulses along the optic nerve.