This prize lecture was first delivered on 2 July 2024 at the 'Physiology in Focus' meeting jointly hosted by the Physiological Society and the Scandinavian Physiological Society.

The lecture acclaims the life and work of the great Irish neurologist, Gordon Morgan Holmes whose work on the battlefields of the Western Front, completely transformed neurology, in terms, both of clinical practice and its knowledge base. Clinical techniques developed by him at the time remain established current practice, and his visual field 'Holmes' maps of the cortical retina were not superseded for 73 years. His legacy to neurology is extensive with this editorship of Brain from 1922 to 1937. He profoundly influenced neurology both here and across the Atlantic, evinced by global warm tributes published on his death in 1965.

This lecture concentrates on a confluence of events and circumstances existing in the Flanders trenches that met a man singularly suited to overcoming these challenges, with German and British influences combining with an Irish adventurousness and insatiable curiosity. His legacy speaks profoundly even today, to curiosity, interdisciplinarity and reconciliation.