Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle was an American neurophysiologist and Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University.
14 Facts About Vernon Mountcastle
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Vernon Mountcastle discovered and characterized the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in the 1950s.
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Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle was born on July 15,1918, in Shelbyville, Kentucky as the third of five children into a family of "farmers, industrial entrepreneurs, or builders of railroads".
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Vernon Mountcastle entered Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, where he majored in chemistry and finished in 3 years.
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Vernon Mountcastle joined the V-12 Navy College Training Program for medical students in January 1942, which allowed him to finish medical school and internship and was eventually ordered to report to the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk, Virginia in June 1943.
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Vernon Mountcastle received his discharge from the Navy just before the Cadmus left for extended ocean duty.
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In 1978 Vernon Mountcastle proposed that all parts of the neocortex operate through a common principle, with the cortical column being the unit of computation.
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Vernon Mountcastle died in Baltimore at the age of 96 in January 2015.
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Vernon Mountcastle was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965 and National Academy of Sciences in 1966.
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Vernon Mountcastle became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1976.
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In 1981, Vernon Mountcastle became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
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In 1984, Vernon Mountcastle received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
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Vernon Mountcastle received the United States National Medal of Science in 1986.
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In 1998, Vernon Mountcastle was awarded the NAS Award in the Neurosciences from the National Academy of Sciences.