Thomas Willis (1621-1675)
English anatomist and physician did work on the anatomy of the brain, and published Pathologicae cerebri, et nervosi generis specimen, an important work on the pathology and neurophysiology of the brain.

Magendie, François (1783-1855)
French physiologist and pioneer of experimental physiology, published a brief yet momentous paper on the functional discreteness of the spinal nerve roots .

Bell, Charles (1774-1842)
Scottish anatomist and neurosurgeon, described the motor role of the anterior or ventral nerve root of the spinal cord. He establishes that the nerves for each of the senses can be traced from specific areas of the brain to their end organs.

Broca, Paul (1824-1880)
French neurological clinician and researcher determines the location of speech center of the brain.

Müller, Johannes (1801-1858)
Professor at Berlin, developed "The Law of Specific Nerve Energies".

Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser share the Nobel Prize in 1944, for their discoveries relating to the highly differentiated functions of individual nerve fibers.

Walter Rudolph Hess wins the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his work on the interbrain, which includes the hypothalamus, subthalamus and parts of the thalamus. His research shows that the interbrain is responsible for coordinating the activities of the body's internal organs.

Egas Moniz, Antonio Caetano Abreu Freire win in 1949 for Leucotomy (prefrontall lobotomy) for certain psychoses.

John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley share the Nobel Prize IN 1963 for their work on the mechanisms of the neuron cell membranes.

Julius Axelrod, Ulf von Euler, and Sir Bernard Katz share the Nobel Prize in 1970 for their discoveries concerning the storage, release, and inactivation of catecholamine neurotransmitters and the effect of psychoactive drugs on this process.

Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel are co-recipients of the Nobel Prize in 1981 for Physiology which they also share with Roger Sperry. Wiesel and Hubel's research centers on how visual information is transmitted from the retina to the brain. Sperry's work concerns the specialization of functions within the cerebral hemispheres of the brain.

Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann share the Nobel Prize in 1991 for their work on the function of single ion channels which increased understanding of how cells communicate with each other.

Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell share the Nobel Prize in 1994 for their discovery of G-protein coupled receptors and their role in signal transduction.

Stanley B. Prusiner wins the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his discovery of a new genre of infectious agents known as prions. Prusiner's research implicated prions as infectious agents in several brain diseases that cause dementia in humans and animals. Prusiner's discovery of this new principle of biological infection has also helped to provide important insights into the mechanisms underlying other types of dementia-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's.

Arvid Carlsson,Gšteborg U., Sweden; Paul Greengard, Rockefeller U.; and Eric Kandel, Columbia U., share the Nobel Prize in 2000 for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system

See: History of the Brain at PBS
History of Neuroscience and Neuroscience Nobel Prizes at U. of Washington