World famous neuroscientist and ex-pop star killed himself after suffering shattering knee injury

• Expert in cognitive neuroscience at UCL
• Bassist in 80s pop band The London Boys

By Rachel Rickard Straus

Published: 12:07 EST, 5 April 2012 | Updated: 20:57 EST, 5 April 2012

Tragic loss: Professor Jonathon Driver died on November 28, 2011

A world-renowned neuroscientist jumped to his death off a 60ft-high bridge after becoming unable to cope with the pain of a serious knee injury.

Professor Jonathon Driver, 49, dislocated his right knee in a motorbike crash in January last year, an inquest heard this week.

He felt unable to cope with his work and feared becoming a burden to his wife and two sons, aged 13 and ten, with whom he lived in Crouch End, North London.

The academic was one of just six scientists worldwide with a Royal Society Anniversary Research Professorship – a coveted post held by many Nobel Prize winners.

He was also a gifted bass guitarist and member of the pop group London Boys.

The Halifax-born father-of-two began struggling to cope with his high-powered work and worried he was becoming a burden on his young family.

His wife, Professor Nilli Lavie, told the inquest on Monday: ‘I’ve known Jon for 20 years and I’d never, ever seen him depressed or down before the accident.

‘He was a very energetic, positive doer of a person, there was a lot of life force in him.’

Professor Driver’s energy declined as his injuries prevented the keen sportsman and bass guitarist returning to work or coaching his son’s football club, St Pancras Coroner’s Court heard.

Professor Lavie, who worked alongside her renowned husband at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: ‘There was a period when he couldn’t sleep for three weeks.

‘During those sleepless nights he would go over and over the accident in his mind.

‘His work depended on his intellectual ability. It was clear to Jon that he wouldn’t be able to manage the expectations as a Royal Society professor.’

She added that her husband was a ‘very honest person’ and would withdraw from the appointment if he could not fulfill the expectations of the role. However he worried he would be left jobless and unable to get any interviews because it was clear he was in so much pain.

Recalling her husband’s final months, Professor Lavie said: ‘He could see the burden it placed on me.

Researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London found participants experienced different levels of responsibility depending on whether what they did was right of wrong

‘I had to keep my job, play the role of two parents to the kids and look after him as well.’

Professor Driver had two operations to increase his knee mobility, but developed intense neuropathic pain in his right leg.

The top neuroscientist was diagnosed with depression, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder and put on antidepressants last summer.

Professor Lavie grew increasingly alarmed at her husband’s mental state the weekend before he died on November 28 last year after he confided to her he had considered killing himself.

Professor Lavie called his psychiatrist to discuss putting her husband on suicide watch.

Deputy coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe ruled that Professor Driver took his own life on November 28.

She said: ‘He was such a highly-functioning individual who clearly understood what he was doing.’

Born in Halifax and brought up in Hull, Professor Driver was a gifted bass guitarist.

His band the London Boys were dubbed Hull’s ‘most talented and imaginative pop group’ by the Daily Mail in the early 1980s.

On the cusp of a promising academic future at Oxford University, pop singer Sade asked him to become her full-time bass player.

But Professor Driver rejected her offer and spent the next ten years at Christchurch College, completing a degree in psychology, a PhD and a junior fellowship.

He took up his first lecture position in Cambridge University’s Experimental Psychology department before moving to UCL where he worked until his death.

Professor Driver’s work focused on the connection between perception and selective attention, both in normal and damaged brains.

The neuro expert published more than 300 papers and is one of the most cited scientists in the world.

Professor Lavie told the Ham & High newspaper after her husband’s death: ‘He looked into all the options and all the forecasts were very grim.

‘It became quite clear that he would be half the man that he was, both as a professional and also as a father and husband because he was in pain all the time.

‘He thought about it for a long time and concluded that having the pain all the time meant he could never fulfill what he had been. He felt he was going to become more of a burden at time went on.

‘A very big component of it was a selfless act. He thought he would just drag us down.

‘He didn’t want the boys to remember him as he went on. Instead of being the dad he would become the patient.'

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