Frankie Milbourne Clark Biography

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Graeme Clark Graeme Milbourne Clark was born August 16th, 1935, in Camden, a town in South-West Sydney. He was educated at the University of Sydney, where he studied medicine. His accomplishment in the invention of the Bionic Ear lead to his fame. As a young boy, inspired by reading the biographies of Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur, Clark started doing biological experiments in his laundry. Clark finished his secondary education at Scots College in 1951. He then attended the University of Sydney, and in 1957, he graduated with honours, obtaining a Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and a Bachelor of Surgery (MS). In 1958, Graeme began his medical career as a Resident Medical Officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. In 1961, he specialised as a registrar in General Surgery (Neurosurgery) and Otolaryngology at the …show more content…

He held these positions from 1963 to 1966. Clark was unsatisfied with the treatments available to profoundly deaf patients, so he returned to the University of Sydney where he completed Medical Science Degree in 1968 and a PhD a year later. Inspired by his deaf father he began to research the possibilities of an electronic implantable hearing device, a cochlear implant. His idea surfaced after reading an article by Blair Simmons. He was determined to give the deaf hearing as he had witnessed the frustration and isolation of those affected. His colleagues said a cochlear implant would be impossible, it was too complicated. His determination had paid off, and after a decade he had successfully invented the first cochlear implant. In 1978, Rod Saunders became the first recipient of Clark's implant. In 1999, Clark was made a laureate professor at the University of Melbourne. Graeme Clark has received many awards including senior Australian of the year in 2001 and the Prime Minister's Prize for science in

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