Graeme Clark

Graeme Milbourne Clark, born on 16 August 1935, is an Australian physician, scientist and inventor whose multi-channel cochlear implant, also known as the Bionic Ear, has given people with severe to profound hearing loss in more than 100 countries the ability to hear and understand spoken language. He grew up in Camden, a town near Sydney, where his hearing-impaired father worked as a pharmacist, and completed his medical degrees at the University of Sydney in 1957, followed by a Master of Surgery in 1968 and a doctorate in 1969. In 1970 he became the William Gibson Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. His device is a miniature receiver-stimulator with multiple electrodes, optimized for processing human speech. A prototype was first implanted in a patient in 1978, and its success showed for the first time that a safe cochlear implant could enable deaf people to understand spoken language.