Graeme Milbourne Clark Invented the Bionic Ear..
The bionic ear was invented in Melbourne by a team at Melbourne University led by Professor Graeme Clark in 1978.
Graeme Milbourne Clark is an Australian doctor, born on 16th August 1935 in Camden, New South Wales. He was a key figure in the research and development of the Bionic Ear – a multiple-channel cochlear implant.
He was educated at Scots College in Sydney, and studied medicine at Sydney University.
He then specialised in ear nose and throat surgery at the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital, London, England and in 1964 he obtained a fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
Clark then returned to Australia and became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.
In 1969 he completed his PhD at the University of Sydney on “Middle Ear & Neural Mechanisms in Hearing and in the Management of Deafness”, together with completing a Master of Surgery thesis on “The Principles of the Structural Support of the Nose and Their Application to Nasal and Septal Surgery”.
In 1976, he returned to England to study at the University of Keele, where he gained the knowledge that was essential for enabling him to work on converting complicated speech signals into electrical stimulation of the hearing nerve.
In 1978 he did the first multi-channel cochlear implant operation at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.
In 1983 Clark founded the Bionic Ear Institute as an independent, non-profit, medical research organization.
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