Graeme Clark - cochlear implant pioneer and recipient of the Lister Medal in 2010.

Credit: Graeme Clark

Related articles

• Reverse engineering the brain
• Bionic eye helps patients see the light
• Prototype bionic eye unveiled
• Breast implants lower cancer risk but boost suicides
• Hummingbird sings with its tail feathers

For 10 years, Graeme Clark had been working tirelessly to develop an implant that would help the deaf to hear. The theory made sense. The electronics had been developed, and the design was near finalised.

But there was one seemingly insurmountable hurdle: how to actually get the implant into the intricate spiral of the inner ear.

During one Melbourne summer in 1977, he took his young children to the beach to escape the heat. While they were playing in the shallows, Clark noticed a seashell lying on the ground - and that its helical structure was a crude replica of the human cochlea.

Inspiration hit. He pulled up some grass blades and experimented with teasing them into the shell's opening. Owing to their flexible tips and stiff bases, the blades slid smoothly into the tightening spiral. It revealed a simple solution to a complex problem.

Rushing back to the lab, he confirmed that wire electrodes following the same design as a grass blade would solve his problem. Designed with progressive stiffness, the electrodes could be made to travel the length of the cochlea, all the way to the nerve cells that code for speech.

This design is now the basis of the hugely successful cochlear implant, a small surgical implant that simulates hearing for the deaf by stimulation of the auditory nerve to reproduce speech. Today, more than 200,000 people have received cochlear implants in more than 100 countries.

At the age of 75, Clark has been awarded surgical science's most prestigious award, the Lister Medal, for its design and development. Awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons in England, the Lister Medal is named after Joseph Lister, whose work on antiseptics in the late 19th century allowed for the development of sterile surgery.

"I am very honoured to receive such a prominent award," Clark says.

There are only three other Australian winners, and Clark says he is little awestruck to be compared with such a veritable 'hall of fame'. "All of the awards have been special but this one is special special."

"His vision, drive and initiative have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the world," John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said in a statement.

"Graeme is a constant inspiration for all of us in the research team. His passion for research is matched by his compassion for those with clinical needs," says Gordon Wallace, Clark's colleague and research director of the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute at the University of Wollongong.

But, as Clark himself reveals, such universal admiration has not always been forthcoming.

Readers' comments