13 Facts About Gerald Edelman

Gerald Maurice Edelman was an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system.

Gerald Edelman was born in 1929 in Ozone Park, Queens, New York, to Jewish parents, physician Edward Edelman, and Anna Edelman, who worked in the insurance industry.

Gerald Edelman studied violin for years, but eventually realized that he did not have the inner drive needed to pursue a career as a concert violinist, and decided to go into medical research instead.

In 1957, Gerald Edelman joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research as a graduate fellow, working in the laboratory of Henry Kunkel and receiving a Ph.

Gerald Edelman decided that, since the book said so little about antibodies, he would investigate them further upon returning to the United States, which led him to study physical chemistry for his 1960 Ph.

Gerald Edelman explicitly rejected dualism and dismissed newer hypotheses such as the so-called 'computational' model of consciousness, which liken the brain's functions to the operations of a computer.

Gerald Edelman argued that mind and consciousness are purely biological phenomena, arising from complex cellular processes within the brain, and that the development of consciousness and intelligence can be explained by Darwinian theory.

Gerald Edelman's theory seeks to explain consciousness in terms of the morphology of the brain.

The young brain contains many more neural connections than will ultimately survive to maturity, and Gerald Edelman argued that this redundant capacity is needed because neurons are the only cells in the body that cannot be renewed and because only those networks best adapted to their ultimate purpose will be selected as they organize into neuronal groups.

Gerald Edelman founded and directed The Neurosciences Institute, a nonprofit research center in San Diego that between 1993 and 2012 studied the biological bases of higher brain function in humans.

Gerald Edelman served on the scientific board of the World Knowledge Dialogue project.

Gerald Edelman was a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's advisory board.

Gerald Edelman died on May 17,2014, in La Jolla, California, aged 84.