David Ginty

"David Ginty, who heads the neurobiology department at Harvard Medical School, has been studying this quirky cast of characters —the sensory neurons of touch —for more than two decades, and has gotten to know them better than anyone else ever has. 

"He has learned their electrical language and what forces excite them, and charted their intricate paths into the skin and up to the brain. And, through feats of genetic engineering and chemical labeling, he has produced the colorful portraits on his walls.

"'David Ginty is the emperor of touch,' said Alexander Chesler, a sensory neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health.

"'You look at his publication list and you go, Oh my God,' said David Hughes, a neuroanatomist at the University of Glasgow. 'He’s so massively productive, and all his papers are published in the very highest-impact journals.'

"Beyond the technical breakthroughs and the discoveries fit for biology textbooks, it’s the images that stick in his colleagues’ minds. They’re otherworldly, like deep-sea creatures —not at all what you might imagine neurons could look like. 

"These strangely shaped cells are the reason why the experience of touch is so rich and multifaceted —why a buzzing cell phone feels different from a warm breeze or a lover’s caress, from raindrops or a mother’s kiss. 

"To realize that your body is covered in them —that they are a part of you —takes your breath away."