Dr. Brenda Milner

Brenda Milner was born in Manchester, England in 1918. Her father was a musical critic, journalist and teacher who married a singing student, Brenda's mother. Young Brenda, with no interest in or aptitude for music was tutored by her father in mathematics and the Arts. When her father died, (Brenda was eight) she found herself well prepared for formal education and soon came to a difficult crossroad: Science or The Humanities?

Brenda chose science, "because I greatly enjoyed high school mathematics, but also because I believed (and still do) that is it possible to develop one's knowledge and enjoyment of foreign languages and literature on one's own, but once you abandon science, you abandon it forever."