Emeritus professor of psychology.

Born: July 9, 1958; Died: October 22, 2014.

Christine Temple, who has died aged 56, had a fascination with the behaviour of the human brain that led to her defining a new field of research and becoming the UK's youngest professor of psychology.

The Glasgow-born academic was just 33 when she was appointed founding professor and first head of the psychology department at the University of Essex. She had already broken new ground with her research in the 1980s and the establishment of a specialist neuropsychology unit at the Royal Holloway, University of London, all of which cemented her role in the emergence of the field of developmental cognitive neuropsychology.

During her time at Essex she also led its new faculty of science and engineering while serving as one of the university's pro vice-chancellors, continuing a steady output of important research and raising two teenage sons. Glamorous, intellectually gifted, hard-working and fun-loving, she was hugely influential and an inspiring role model as a mother and academic.

Though born in Glasgow she grew up in Edinburgh, where her father Robert S Temple was financial director of the Distillers Company Ltd, and was educated at the capital's Mary Erskine School for Girls. She came across her first cases of unusual brain development during her studies at St Andrews University for a psychology degree.

She graduated with first class honours and, after winning a scholarship to study abroad, gained an MA in cognitive psychology from the University of California in Los Angeles. Her experiences there included working with wounded war veterans and so-called split brain patients who had undergone surgery as an epilepsy treatment.

Returning to the UK, she undertook her PhD at Oxford where she could work with some of the finest minds and combine her passion for research with her love of culture, art, music, wine and fine dining. Her research brought her immediate international prominence. Her supervisor had previously produced ground-breaking research on the reading ability of people who had become dyslexic after a brain injury and Dr Temple wrote a series of papers showing that those with developmental dyslexia could suffer impairments that were as selective as those seen in cases of acquired dyslexia.

She went on to expand her work into areas including children's arithmetical disorders. She pioneered the use of single case studies in the investigation of developmental disorders and was instrumental in defining the area of research known as developmental cognitive neuropsychology, publishing a monograph on the subject in 1997.

She was a lecturer, then senior lecturer and subsequently a reader in neuropsychology at the Royal Holloway, University of London where she established the Developmental Neuropsychology Unit, working with children with dyslexia, language disorders, face recognition problems, memory difficulties and autism as well as with children and adults with unusual talents.

Professor Temple was appointed to the Foundation Chair of Psychology at the University of Essex in 1991 where she would remain for the next 23 years. Her book The Brain, an introduction to the psychology of the human brain and behaviour, was published in 1993, and from 2004 she also served the university as a pro vice-chancellor (PVC) for six years.

At the time the institution was going through considerable change and restructuring but she proved to be an outstanding, analytical decision-maker as well as an exceptional scientist. Having initially been PVC (Resources) she later also led the new science and engineering faculty and played a vital role in securing the university a ranking of ninth out of 150 in the UK's 2007 Research Assessment Exercise through her work on the institution's Research Strategy Committee.

In addition she was a non-executive director of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, a governor of Felsted School and a former trustee of the Coram Children's Legal Centre.

Though she retired through ill health in the summer, she remained tenacious, determined and good fun, a woman who believed in putting a positive spin on life's events whenever possible and who is remembered by her colleagues as much for her style and personal charisma as for her formidable intellect and perspicacity.

Her love of the visual, performance and musical arts stemmed from her childhood in Scotland and the Edinburgh Festival and she was a keen art collector, particularly of Picasso prints. As a neuropsychologist she was fascinated by why some people are more creative than others and the Spanish artist's innovative genius was the basis of her book Picasso's Brain, an examination of some of the world's most creative minds, which she completed shortly before her death.

Professor Temple is survived by her sons Alexander and Nicholas, her mother Diane and brothers James and Robert.