A River Divided

GEORGE PAXINOS studied at Berkeley, McGill and Yale and is Professor of Medical Sciences at Neuroscience Research Australia and The University of New South Wales, Sydney. He was President of the Australian Neuroscience Society and the World Congress of Neuroscience.He has identified and named more brain areas than anyone in history and published 57 books-his first, The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, being the most cited publication in neuroscience and, for decades, the third most cited science book of all time. His Atlas of the Human Brain received awards from the Association of American Publishers and the British Medical Association. His atlases and concepts of brain organization are used by most scientists working on the relationship between the brain and cognition, emotion, motivation and thought, including neurologic or psychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer's and depression.He is a cyclist and environmental activist who has often been defeated by the government. Twenty-one years in the making, A River Divided is his answer. The story came to George when a friend suggested he visit Santiago de Compostela, where it's said St James' remains are buried. He thought of harvesting DNA from the remains to produce a clone, but then thought: why not from someone far greater? The research for his book took George to Jerusalem and Masada, The Vatican, the Brazilian Amazon and Buenos Aires where he learned the tango.