Birdsey Renshaw was an American neuroscientist and made innovative contributions to neuroscience. He is credited with investigating the inhibitory interneurons in the ventral horn of grey matter of the spinal cord that bear his name. Ever since their discovery, Renshaw cells have been the objects of extensive researches. The recurrent inhibitory pathway from motor axon collaterals via Renshaw cells back to motoneurons serves as one of the best-documented examples of a negative-feedback mechanism in the central nervous system.1

Birdsey Renshaw was born in 1911 as a son of Raemer Rex and Laura Renshaw. He received his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1936. In the same year, he joined Alexander Forbes’s research team …