Gerald Edelman was born on the 1st of July 1929 in New York. After school he attended Ursinus college, graduating in 1950. He then went to medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his M.D. degree in 1954. He spent two years working at the American hospital in Paris with the U.S. Army Medical Corps before joining the laboratory of Dr. Henry G. Kunkel at the Rockefeller Institute
Dr Edelman received his Ph.D degree in 1960 and stayed on at the Rockefeller Institute as Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies. Here he and and his research team succeeded in constructing a precise model of an entire antibody molecule. It was this work on the chemical structure of antibodies that led to him, along with Rodney Porter, winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in in 1972.
In 1987 he published "Neural Darwinism" which contains a detailed theory explaining the development and organization of higher brain functions in terms of a process known as neuronal group selection. He continues to work in theoretical neuroscience at The Neurosciences Institute where he serves as director.
Gerald Edelman talks in great detail about his scientific career and his current work in the field of neuroscience.
If you are already a Peoples Archive subscriber, we suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection:
- Lunch at the Rockefeller Institute
- An epiphany working on Bence Jones protein
- Developing interest in neuroscience: an original thought at Zurich airport
- Philiosophy and consciousness: Galileo and Descartes
- The place of crisis in science