Roger Bannister

Bannister earned his medical degree from Oxford in 1963, and became a neurologist. When asked why he did not become a neurosurgeon, he said, according to Deford, "The interesting thing for me was deciding where the tumor was—rather than taking it out." Beginning in 1969, he served as the editor of a textbook, Brain's Clinical Neurology. In 1990 it was retitled Brain and Bannister's Clinical Neurology.

In 1975, Bannister was involved in a head-on automobile crash that almost killed him. Although he recovered from his severe injuries, he has been unable to run

Roger Bannister, crossing finish line

since then, although he still bicycles. After his crash, he spent his enforced period of rest thinking about his work and what he wanted to do, and became involved in medical research; he set up a laboratory to study the part of the brain that controls blood pressure.

Also in 1975, Bannister was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, receiving the title "Sir Roger Bannister." The honor was not in recognition of his running, but of his life's work as a runner and a physician. Bannister has written hundreds of scholarly papers, and has edited medical textbooks. During the 1970s he was chair of the British Sports Council, and he helped design urine tests that would detect athletes who used performance-enhancing drugs.

In 1996, speaking at the Cincinnati Heart Mini-Marathon Clinic, Bannister said that he believed the next time barrier for the mile is 3:30, according to Bob Queenan in the Cincinnati Post. He noted that Algerian athlete Noureddine Morceli had run 3:44.29 on July 3, 1995.

In 2001, Bannister's breaking of the four-minute barrier was chosen as the Greatest British Sports Performance of the Century, according to Alison Kervin in the London Times. Bannister told Kervin that he was "very flattered indeed," especially since his performance was placed above that of five-time Olympic gold-medal winner, Steve Redgrave, an athlete whom Bannister had long admired.