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Russell Grant Foster, CBE, FRS FMedSci (born 1959) is a British professor of circadian neuroscience, the Director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi). He is also a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at the Brasenose College at the University of Oxford. He and his group are credited with the discovery of the non-rod, non-cone, photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (pRGCs) in the mammalian retina which provide input to the circadian rhythm system.

Education
Foster studied at the University of Bristol and graduated with a BSc in Zoology in 1980. He also carried out postgraduate studies at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Brian Follett, and was awarded a PhD in 1984 for his thesis entitled An investigation of the extraretinal photoreceptors mediating photoperiodic induction in the Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica).

Career
From 1988 to 1995 Foster was a member of the National Science Foundation Center for Biological Rhythms at the University of Virginia. In 1995, he returned to UK and started his own lab at Imperial College, London. He later transferred his laboratory to the University of Oxford to engage in more translational research.

Rods and cones unnecessary for entrainment
In 1991, Foster and his colleagues provided evidence that rods and cones are not necessary for entrainment of an animal to light. In this experiment, Foster gave 15 minute light pulses to retinally degenerative mice. These mice are homozygous for the rd allele and were shown to have no rods in their retina. They retain a small number of a single layer of cones. To study the effects of light entrainment, magnitude of phase shift of locomotor activity was measured. The results showed that both mice with normal retina and mice with degenerate retina showed similar entrainment patterns. Foster hypothesized that circadian photoreception occurs with small number of cones without outer layer or that an unrecognized class of photoreceptive cells are present.

In 1999, Foster studied light entrainment on mice without cones or both rods and cones. Mice without cones or without both photoreceptive cells (rd/rd cl allele) still entrained to light. Meanwhile, mice with eyes removed could not entrain to light. Foster concluded that rods and cones are unnecessary for entrainment to light, and that the murine eye contains additional photoreceptive cell types.

Literary works
He is the co-author with writer and broadcaster Leon Kreitzman of two popular science books on circadian rhythms, Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing and Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive.. He has also co-written a book titled Sleep: a Very Short Introduction.

Awards and honours
Foster was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and a member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council council in 2011.

Foster was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to science.

Notable awards
Foster has received recognition from around the world for his discovery of pRGCs:
 * Honma Prize (Japan)
 * David G. Cogan Award (USA)
 * Zoological Society Scientific & Edride-Green Medals (UK)