Jan Kristian Schøning Jansen (16 January 1931 – 8 January 2011) was a Norwegian physiologist.

He was born in Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 as a son of professor of medicine Jan Birger Jansen (1898–1984) and Helene Sofie Schøning (1902–1876). He was barried to Lisbeth Bjørneby from 1954 to 1974 and to Helen Troye from 1981.

He finished

Examen artium

Examen artium was the name of the academic certification conferred in Denmark and Norway, qualifying the student for admission to university studies. Examen artium was originally introduced as the entrance exam of the University of Copenhagen in 1630...

 his secondary education at Berg Upper Secondary School in 1949 and studied at the University of Oslo

University of Oslo

The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...

 under his father and Birger Kaada. He specialized in neurophysiology

Neurophysiology

Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...

. He took the cand.med.

Cand.med.

Candidate of Medicine , Candidata Medicinae , abbreviated Cand. Med.) is an academic degree awarded in Denmark, Iceland and Norway following a six-year medical school education....

 degree in 1955, and in 1957 he took the dr.med. degree with the thesis Afferent impulses to the cerebellar hemispheres from the cerebral cortex and certain subcortical nuclei. An electro-anatomical study in the cat. In 1959 he started studies at the University Laboratory of Physiology in Oxford. He won the Andres Jahre Prize for Young Researchers together with Per Andersen

Per Andersen

Per Oskar Andersen is a Norwegian brain researcher at the University of Oslo. Research by his lab, specifically by Terje Lømo , led to the discovery of long-term potentiation in 1966.He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.He is also a fellow at the Royal...

 in 1967. He was hired as a docent

Docent

Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

 at the University of Oslo in 1968, worked under Stephen Kuffler

Stephen Kuffler

Stephen William Kuffler was a pre-eminent Hungarian-American neurophysiologist. Often, he's been referred to as the "Father of Modern Neuroscience". He founded the Harvard Neurobiology department in 1966, and made numerous seminal contributions to our understanding of vision, neural coding, and...

 and John Nicholls at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 from 1969 to 1970, and was a professor at the University of Oslo from 1979 to 1995. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway.-History:The University of Oslo was established in 1811. The idea of a learned society in Christiania surfaced for the first time in 1841. The city of Throndhjem had no university, but had a learned...

 from 1977, and chairman of the Nansen Fund.