I first met Jon ten years ago during an Msc degree. Since then I met Jon on several occasions but I was never close to him. Nevertheless, two events from that time sum up for me the kind of relation a junior academic like myself could have with Jon Driver, the legend of cognitive neuroscience. I think there is nothing in Jon's formal post that dictated that relation. It was all down to who Jon was.
I remember his brilliant lecture well and I recalled it many times since then, when colleagues complained about Jon's fast and soft-spoken speeches they struggled to follow. He was apparently aware that at times he mumbled; he stopped half way through class, looked at the students and said something like this: People have told me that I mumble and they cannot hear and they think I do not care. The truth is, the more I like and care about something, the more I forget myself and speak faster and faster, quieter and quieter. But it is because I really care about certain topics in science. I do not think I missed a word he said, after this.
Later on in the year, I wrote an essay on visual awareness for this course. Jon, like other busy staff members, had to mark it. Expect that he wrote more than a page of specific, brilliant suggestions and recommended to me and my tutor that I try to publish it and responded immediately to all emails that followed. He didn't of course have to do this. But Jon took the time.
As someone who did not know Jon well, in these 10 years of seeing him and chatting with him in corridors and conferences, these are the two things that persisted in my memories of him and I think make him such a unique, role model in science: Jon was not only the brilliant scientist we all wanted to be like, he was a man who really cared for science and one took the time for helping others.
