Graeme Milbourne Clark AC FRS FAA FRACS (born 16 August 1935)[1] is an Australian Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne.
Clark returned to Australia where he became a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons and in 1969 completed his PhD at the University of Sydney on "Middle Ear & Neural Mechanisms in Hearing and in the Management of Deafness".
[citation needed] Clark's research demonstrated that an electrode bundle with 'graded stiffness' would pass without injury around the tightening spiral of the cochlea to the speech frequency region.
He achieved a breakthrough during a vacation at the beach; he conceptualized using a seashell to replicate the human cochlea, and grass blades (which were flexible at the tip and gradually increasing in stiffness) to represent the electrodes.
The bands had to be wide enough to minimize the charge density of the electric current for safety, but narrow enough for localized stimulation of the nerve fibres for the place coding of frequency.
[vague] In order to address issues about the safety of the device, Clark conducted experiments to show that there was minimal risk of meningitis from a middle ear infection if a fibrous tissue sheath grew around the electrode bundle.
George Watson, an Australian World War II veteran, had lost his hearing after a bomb blast thirteen years earlier.
[citation needed] in December 1978, Clark arranged that his audiologist present open-set words to his first patient, who was able to identify several correctly.
[citation needed] It thus became the first multi-channel cochlear system to be approved as safe and effective by any health regulatory body for giving speech understanding, both with lip reading and for electrical stimulation alone in people who had hearing before going deaf.
[citation needed] After a detailed analysis of results the FDA announced in 1990 that the 22-channel cochlear implant was safe and effective for deaf children from two to 17 years of age in understanding speech both with and without lip-reading.
[17] The goal of the Bionic Ear Institute was, "to give deaf children and adults the opportunity to participate as fully as possible in the hearing world and to find new ways to restore brain function".