Harvey Williams Cushing and Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, 1938. Harvey Williams Cushing (1869-1939), was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery, and the first to describe Cushing's syndrome. He is often called the "father of modern neurosurgery." He wrote numerous studies on surgery of the brain and spinal column and to made important contributions to bacteriology and the study of blood pressure in surgery. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857- 1952) was an English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, and a pathologist, Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society in the early 1920s. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, in 1932 for their work on the functions of neurons.