Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was a neurophysiologist born in Islington, London in 1857.

In April 1878, he passed his Primary Examination for the Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, and 12 months later the Primary for Fellowship.

In October 1879, Sherrington entered Cambridge as a non-collegiate student. The following year he entered Gonville and Caius College. He became interested in how anatomical structure is expressed in physiological function.

He earned his Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons on 4 August 1884. In 1885, he obtained a First Class in the Natural Science Tripos with the mark of distinction. In the same year, he earned the degree of M.B., Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from Cambridge.

His first paper involved ascertaining the existence of localised function in the cortex by testing on dogs. He acted as junior colleague to John Newport Langley during this study. He then travelled to Spain where he studied with Friedrich Golz.

In 1891, he was appointed as superintendent of the Brown Institute for Advanced Physiological and Pathological Research of the University of London, a centre for human and animal physiological and pathological research.

His first job of full-professorship came with his appointment as Holt Professor of Physiology at Liverpool in 1895, succeeding Francis Gotch. There he continued his work on reflexes and reciprocal innervation as well as studying how muscle excitation was inversely proportional to the excitation of an opposing group of muscles.

In 1913, Oxford University offered him the position of Waynflete Chair of Physiology. He retired in 1936. He enjoyed the honour of teaching many bright students at Oxford, including Wilder Penfield. Others went on to become Nobel laureates themselves.

Sherrington received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian in 1932.

He died in 1951 in Ipswich where he had spent much of his childhood.