Patrick D. Wall (scientist)

Patrick David Wall (25 April 1925 – 8 August 2001) and best known for the gate control theory of pain.

Early life and education Wall was born in Nottingham on 25 April 1925 to Thomas Wall, the director of education for Middlesex, and his wife Ruth Cresswell. He was educated at St Paul's School, London and the University of Oxford, studying medicine at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became interested in pain. He published his first two papers, in the prominent science journals Brain and Nature, at the age of 21. While at Oxford he had also helped found the British Medical Students' Journal, partially to help campaign for the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS). He graduated in 1948, by which time he had published three papers in prominent science journals.

Career and research After graduating, he spent a short time treating holocaust survivors and refugees in mainland Europe, and then moved to the United States where he took up a position as an instructor at the Yale School of Medicine investigating the use of lobotomies as a method of controlling depression. The paper was looked at in a new light after Wall collaborated with Bill Sweet to produce the Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator, developed along the lines of the theory. The effective working of the device validated Wall and Melzack's paper, and contributed to Wall’s recognition as a leading neuroscientist. and took up a position as Professor of Anatomy at University College London, under JZ Young. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians in 1984 and the Royal Society in 1989;

Personal life Wall was married three times; first to Betty Tucker on 10 August 1950, an artist and poet whom he divorced in 1973, second to Vera Ronnen on 26 August 1976, an artist from Jerusalem whom he also divorced and finally to Mary McLellan on 6 May 1999. Wall was a chain-smoker, and enjoyed bird-watching outside of his work, although he preferred not to talk about his personal life. An exception to this was politics; Wall was fervently left-wing, and had set up various student and other organisations to support various causes.

In 1996 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer after collapsing while on holiday in Cork. After treatment he went into remission, which held for five years; the cancer returned in 2001, and after a kidney operation on 2 August he discharged himself on 8 August so he could die at home. While suffering from cancer he had published the book Pain: The Science of Suffering. His body was left for medical dissection.