Richard Caton

author

Richard Caton

1842–1926

A Victorian physician and civic leader, he helped reveal that the brain produces electrical signals—work that opened the way for electroencephalography. He also played a prominent public role in Liverpool, balancing medical science with city life and public service.

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 in 1842 and later based in Liverpool, Richard Caton trained as a doctor at the University of Edinburgh and built a career as a physician and physiologist. He is best remembered for experiments in the 1870s that recorded electrical activity from the surface of animal brains, an important early step toward the later development of EEG.

Caton published brief but influential reports showing that the brain’s cortex produced measurable electrical changes. Although others developed the field further after him, his work is widely recognized as pioneering in the study of brain electrophysiology.

Beyond the laboratory, he was also deeply involved in public life in Liverpool. He served the city in civic roles, including as Lord Mayor, and remained known both as a respected doctor and as an early scientific thinker whose findings had a long afterlife.