The Transgender Scientist Who Changed How We See the Brain

Updated on 2 January at 4:11 p.m. ET

Right until the end of his life last Wednesday, Ben Barres made it his business to champion the unsung.

While most of his fellow neuroscientists studied neurons, the branching cells that carry electrical signals through the brain, Barres focused his attention on another group of cells called glia. Even though they equal neurons in number, glia were long dismissed as the brain’s support crew—there simply to provide nutrients or structural scaffolding.* But Barres showed that glia are stars in their own right. They help neurons to mature, producing the connections that are the basis for learning and memory, and then pruning those connections so that the most useful ones remain.

In showing how important glia are, Barres revolutionized our understanding of the brain. That alone would have been enough to secure a spot, at the age of 63 from pancreatic cancer, was as much about his generosity of spirit as it was about his force of intellect.