AT THE TOP OF THE BRAIN GAME
Helen Harvey speaks with Sir Richard Faull, a world-leading brain scientist who grew up in Tikorangi.
"I was always interested in how things worked. And I was really interested in people."
Sir Richard Faull
As a young boy growing up in Tikorangi, Sir Richard Faull used to loved playing with radios.
Not as something that played his favourite music, but as something to pull apart to see how it worked.
He built his own shortwave radio, he says.
‘‘I was always interested in how things worked. And I was really interested in people.’’
They are two things that have served him well in his distinguished career as a worldleading brain scientist.
His interest in people comes from his parents. They owned the general store in Tikorangi, which was a meeting place for the community, he says.
Faull, 71, was one of five boys and they had to work in the shop delivering groceries.
‘‘My dad always said the customer was right, you have to look after them.
‘‘So, we were taught very early in life you have to look after people. Not only that, but you have to help them in every possible way.’’
The shop was like a social welfare centre, with his parents helping to solve people’s problems, he says, so they were brought up in an environment of looking after people.
‘‘We learnt how to talk to people. My dad always said, whatever you do you have to do your very best.
‘‘You have to be true to yourself, you have to be honest, but always look after people.
‘‘We played a huge role in the church and my dad was a community man on every committee and contributed.’’
Though the family ‘‘had very little they had everything’’ - a loving family, huge support, lots of relatives.
But neither his parents nor their siblings finished high school, he says.
‘‘After the first year they left, so they valued education and they valued us getting education. And they supported us in whatever we chose to do.’’
Faull went to Waitara High School, where he loved maths, physics and chemistry.
‘‘It wasn’t a chore. I loved reading books. I was quite quiet.’’
There were 13 kids in the sixth form - and no seventh form - when Faull was there and only three students took science.
‘‘We sort of taught ourselves. And that was great because you learnt how to learn.’’
He was dux of Waitara High School and then went to New Plymouth Boys’ High School for his last year, where he won a scholarship to university.
‘‘I went to Auckland University because I thought I was going to do electrical engineering, but I hadn’t really decided.’’
He eventually decided to do medicine because he was interested in the human body and how it worked, but also because he wouldn’t have to choose what to do for another six years, he says.
‘‘I was lucky there were two of us that year who got admitted to Otago medical school. That was the only medical school.’’
In his third year he got to dissect the human brain.
‘‘I thought this is the most marvellous exciting organ in the human body and it captivated me. I fell in love with the human brain.’’
So, he took a year out and did research on the human brain for a separate degree - a Bachelor of Medical Science.
‘‘That research year just lighted up my life.
‘‘I realised if I ended up doing medicine I was either going to do brain surgery, neurosurgery, or become a brain research scientist.’’
When he graduated he worked in brain surgery for a short period of time and though he loved it, he realised how little was known about the brain. So he did a PHD, got a Harkness Fellowship and went to the United States to study with two of the top brain scientists in the world, he says.
One was in San Francisco and the other was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. He then came back to New Zealand and set up his research group in 1978.
‘‘Over the last 40 years I have developed a human brain research programme, which has utilised brains which families and people with brain disease gave to us when they died.’’
They started looking at Huntingtons disease and then gradually set up what is now called the Neurological Foundation Douglas Human Brain Bank, he says.
‘‘We found out new things that we didn’t know before.
‘‘It’s been incredibly exciting being able to work on the human brain and we’ve only been able to do that because families have gifted the brain of their loved one to us, giving us the most precious gift in the world.’’
They keep in contact with the families who donate, he says.
‘‘And we tell them how our research is going. The bond with the families is very special and goes back almost as far as when I was working in the shop looking after people.’’
As far as the science goes, he is most proud of discovering the human brain makes new brain cells, he says.
‘‘Which no one knew about before. It means you make new brain cells for ever. The other thing was working out all the patterns of cell death in the human brain in Huntington’s disease, Parkinsons and Alzheimer’s and relating all those findings to the symptoms of the person. You can only do that by studying the human brain.’’
They are one of the few groups in the world who have their research focussed on the human brain.
‘‘We still do what I learned back in the shop in Tikorangi - how to work and talk with people. I grew up with a philosophy that no one is more important than anyone else in the world.
‘‘Pursuing your dreams in life. That’s what I’ve done and it’s ended up providing rewards and awards and a knighthood which is the most humbling thing in the world, which I didn’t really know if I wanted.’’
In the 2017 New Year’s Honours Faull was knighted for services to medical research.
‘‘The only reason I accepted it was because I could share it with all the families and all our team here and it has enabled us to get recognition to do all sorts of things in the future.’’
Faull has five children and four grandchildren and a ‘‘fantastic’’ wife, who he calls Lady Diana. They keep him on the straight and narrow and make sure he doesn’t get ‘‘too obsessed’’ with things, he says.
Because he loves his job. And because of that he doesn’t consider it work.
‘‘I love it, that you get to work with great people who support you, students, and families. You get to travel the world to work with other research groups in United States and Europe it’s incredible. We work with about 25 different groups internationally.’’ So, he has no plans to retire. ‘‘But I will slow down. I’ve promised Diana I will slow down.’’