1. Eleanor Anne Maguire was an Irish neuroscientist who was Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, where she was a Wellcome Trust principal research fellow, from 2007 until her death in 2025.
14 Facts About Eleanor Maguire
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Eleanor Maguire studied psychology at University College Dublin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990.
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Eleanor Maguire studied clinical and experimental neuropsychology at University of Wales, Swansea and graduated with a Master of Science degree in 1991.
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Eleanor Maguire undertook her Doctor of Philosophy degree at University College Dublin, Ireland, where she first became interested in the neural basis of memory while working with patients as a neuropsychologist at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.
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Eleanor Maguire completed her PhD in 1994, and her doctoral thesis was titled Real-world spatial memory following temporal-lobe surgery in humans.
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Eleanor Maguire served as a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, UK, where she was the deputy director.
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Eleanor Maguire led the Memory and Space research laboratory at the centre.
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Eleanor Maguire's team used standard whole brain and high resolution structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging in conjunction with behavioural testing and neuropsychological examination of amnesic patients to pursue their aims.
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Eleanor Maguire's interest was mainly focused on the hippocampus, a brain structure known to be crucial for learning and memory, whilst exploring the roles of the parahippocampal cortex, the retrosplenial cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
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In February 2014, Eleanor Maguire delivered a Friday Evening Discourse at The Royal Institution.
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Eleanor Maguire died from complications of cancer and pneumonia at a hospice in London on 4 January 2025, at the age of 54.
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Eleanor Maguire won a number of prizes for outstanding contributions to science, including:.
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Eleanor Maguire was named as one of 'Twenty Europeans who have changed our lives' when The European Union launched a new science and innovation initiative.
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In 2011, Eleanor Maguire was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and, in 2016, a Fellow of the Royal Society.