Simon Fisher

Simon E. Fisher is a British geneticist and neuroscientist who has pioneered research into the genetic basis of human speech and language. He is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and professor of language and genetics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Nijmegen, The Netherlands). Prior to this he was a Royal Society Research Fellow leading a group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University. He was co-discoverer of FOXP2, the first gene to be implicated in a human speech and language disorder. His subsequent research has used FOXP2 and other language-related genes as molecular windows into neural pathways critical for language. Awards and prizes in recognition of this work include the Francis Crick Lecture in 2008 and the inaugural Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize in 2009.