10/04/03

Professor Graeme Clark was born in country New South Wales in 1935. It was he who along with his fellow colleagues developed the cochlear implant or as we know it, the Bionic Ear.

The thing that sparked his interest in the causes of deafness was that his father was partially deaf. He became a surgeon, specialising in otolaryngology, which is the study of diseases of ear and throat.

There was very little money available for his research on the Bionic Ear because many believed that deafness could not possibly be cured.

Professor Graeme Clark's theory was that electrical stimulation of the nerves in the cochlea should allow hearing to be "restored." It took the him and his fellow colleagues based at the University of Melbourne 18 years to turn his theory into a commercial reality.

Finally after all of his hard work, in 1978, he successfully implanted the first working Bionic Ear into a man named Rod Saunders. From that moment on, his achievements have been recognised worldwide.