Wilfrid Rall (August 29, 1922 – April 1, 2018) was a neuroscientist who spent most of his career at the National Institutes of Health.
He is considered one of the founders of computational neuroscience, and was a pioneer in establishing the integrative functions of neuronal dendrites.
Rall developed the use of cable theory in neuroscience, as well as passive and active compartmental modeling of the neuron.
In 1954, he spent a sabbatical year at University College London in the Biophysics Department headed by Bernard Katz, and after a final year in Dunedin (where he was Acting Head of Department) he then moved to Bethesda, Maryland and the National Institutes of Health, where he remained until his retirement in 1994.
Wilfrid Rall's scientific achievements concern the electrical properties of neurons, and in particular the excitability of dendrites.