Richard Caton

author

Richard Caton

1842–1926

A Liverpool physician and civic leader, he helped reveal that the brain produces electrical signals—work that laid foundations for modern electroencephalography. His life joined scientific curiosity, medical practice, and public service in Victorian and early 20th-century Britain.

2 Audiobooks

The Temples and Ritual of Asklepios at Epidauros and Athens Two Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain

The Temples and Ritual of Asklepios at Epidauros and Athens Two Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain

by Richard Caton

I-em-hotep and Ancient Egyptian medicine: II. Prevention of valvular disease The Harveian Oration delivered before the Royal college of physicians on June 21, 1904

I-em-hotep and Ancient Egyptian medicine: II. Prevention of valvular disease The Harveian Oration delivered before the Royal college of physicians on June 21, 1904

by Richard Caton

About the author

Born in Bradford on July 26, 1842, Richard Caton studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and built his career in Liverpool. He became known as a physician and physiologist at a time when medicine was rapidly changing, and he earned lasting recognition for experiments that showed electrical activity in the brains of animals.

Those studies, published in the 1870s, are now seen as an important early step toward EEG research. Caton also had a wide range of interests beyond laboratory work and wrote on medical history and ancient medicine, showing the curiosity of a doctor who looked both forward and back.

Public life mattered to him too. In Liverpool he served as Lord Mayor, and his career reflects a rare mix of scientific discovery, clinical medicine, scholarship, and civic duty. He died on January 2, 1926.