biology

Ray Guillery

Ray Guillery is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ray Guillery rather than just read about it. In short: Rainer Walter "Ray" Guillery FRS (28 August 1929 – 7 April 2017) was a British physiologist and neuroanatomist. He is best known for his discovery that in Siamese cats with certain genotypes of the albino gene, the wiring of the optic chiasm is disrupted, with less of the nerve-crossing than is normal.

Key takeaways

Ray Guillery belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ray Guillery to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ray Guillery from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rainer Walter "Ray" Guillery FRS (28 August 1929 – 7 April 2017) was a British physiologist and neuroanatomist. He is best known for his discovery that in Siamese cats with certain genotypes of the albino gene, the wiring of the optic chiasm is disrupted, with less of the nerve-crossing than is normal.

Early life and education Guillery was born in Greifswald, Germany on 28 August 1929. He began his education as a medical student at University College London (UCL) in 1948. He obtained his BSc in 1951 and his PhD in 1954.

Career Guillery taught at UCL for 11 years. In 1964 he went to University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he helped to start the new graduate programme in neuroscience. In 1977, he moved to the University of Chicago to lead another new graduate neuroscience programme. In 1984, Guillery returned to the UK as head of the department of Human Anatomy and Dr. Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford, until 1996. He was then subsequently a professor emeritus of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin Medical School and, as of 2010, an honorary emeritus research fellow at the Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at Oxford. In 1989, Guillery was the founding editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Neuroscience. He died on 7 April 2017 at the age of 87.

Honours He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, and a Fellow of University College London in 1987. In 1996, he delivered the J. W. Jenkinson Memorial Lectureship.

References

External links New Scientist, 14 September 1978

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ray Guillery

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ray Guillery claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ray Guillery before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ray Guillery ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ray Guillery

In research: Ray Guillery appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ray Guillery in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ray Guillery is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1929 births, 2017 deaths, British academic journal editors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ray Guillery outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ray Guillery in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ray Guillery means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ray Guillery out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ray Guillery in simple terms?

Why does Ray Guillery matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ray Guillery?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ray Guillery.