The Ferrier Lecture is a Royal Society lectureship given every three years "on a subject related to the advancement of natural knowledge on the structure and function of the nervous system". It was created in 1928 to honour the memory of Sir David Ferrier, a neurologist who was the first British scientist to electronically stimulate the brain for the purpose of scientific study.
In its 81-year history, the Lecture has been given 27 times. It has never been given more than once by the same person, and all lecturers have been male. The first lecture was given in 1929 by Charles Scott Sherrington, and was titled "Some functional problems attaching to convergence". The most recent lecturer was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who presented a lecture in 2007 titled "Brain development and brain repair: Molecules and mechanisms that control neuronal wiring". In 1971, the lecture was given by two individuals (David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel) on the same topic, with the title "The function and architecture of the visual cortex".