APS Member History

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41	Name:	Dr. Richard F. Thompson
	Institution:	University of Southern California
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	209. Neurobiology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1930
	Death Date:	September 16, 2014

	Richard Thompson received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He was a professor at the University of Oregon School of Medicine from 1959-67 and a professor at the University of California, Irvine from 1967-73 and 1975-80. He was then professor, Karl Lashley's Chair, at Harvard University from 1973-75 and the Bing Professor of Human Biology and Psychology at Stanford University from 1980-87. He then became the Keck Professor of Psychology and Biological Sciences and Director of the Neurosciences Program at the University of Southern California. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He received the 2010 Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement from the American Psychological Foundation. He was the author of Foundations of Physiological Psychology (1967); (with others) Psychology (1971); and Introduction to Physiological Psychology (1975). Dr. Thompson served on the council of the Society for Neuroscience and as president of the American Psychological Society. He devoted his life to the study of brain substrates of behavior. His text, Foundations of Physiological Psychology, was a landmark in the development of modern behavioral neuroscience, as was his later founding and editing of the APA journal, Behavioral Neuroscience. Inspired by Karl Lashley's "search for the engram," his research was focused on neural mechanisms of learning and memory, initially in the now classic work with W.A. Spencer on habituation. Dr. Thompson and his students utilized basic associative learning in mammals, characterizing processes of memory formation in two brain structures: hippocampus and cerebellum. They appear to have localized one form of memory trace to the cerebellum, thus coming full circle to Lashley's initial quest. Dr. Thompson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1999 and was awarded the Society's Karl Spencer Lashley Award in 2007 "In recognition of his distinguished contributions to understanding the brain substrates of learning and memory. Specifically, through his meticulous and diligent application of the eyeblink classical conditioning paradigm, Thompson discovered the essential role of the deep cerebellar nuclei, as an essential component of classically conditioned procedural memory formation, and that plasticity within the synapses of these nuclei represent the long-elusive memory trace that Lashley had sought." Richard Thompson died September 16, 2014, at age 84.

42	Name:	Dr. Kip S. Thorne
	Institution:	California Institute of Technology
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	106. Physics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1940

	Born in Logan, Utah in 1940, Kip Thorne received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technolgy in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. He returned to Caltech as an associate professor in 1967 and became Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1970, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor in 1981, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. Dr. Thorne's research has focused on Einstein's general theory of relativity and on astrophysics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and especially gravitational waves. He was co-founder (with R. Weiss and R.W.P. Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project, with which he is still associated. He is a member of the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) International Science Team. Dr. Thorne was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1972, the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He has been awarded the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. For his book for nonscientists, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (1994), Dr. Thorne was awarded the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the Phi Beta Kappa Science Writing Award, and the (Russian) Priroda Readers' Choice Award. In 2017 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Dr. Thorne has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." He was also a science consultant to the screenwriter and director of the 2014 film Intersteller and wrote the book The Science of Intersteller to explain the very deep physics that underlies some of the amazing sights from the movie: black holes, higher dimensions and 4,000 foot-tall waves. In 1973 Dr. Thorne co-authored the textbook Gravitation, from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity theory. Approximately 40 physicists have received the Ph.D. at Caltech under Dr. Thorne's personal mentorship.

43	Name:	Dr. Sam Bard Treiman
	Institution:	Princeton University
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	106. Physics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1925
	Death Date:	11/30/99

44	Name:	Dr. Evon Zartman Vogt
	Institution:	Harvard University
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	4. Humanities
	Subdivision:	403. Cultural Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1918
	Death Date:	May 13, 2004

45	Name:	Dr. Myron Weiner
	Institution:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	3. Social Sciences
	Subdivision:	304. Jurisprudence and Political Science
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1931
	Death Date:	6/3/99

46	Name:	Dr. Bernhard Witkop
	Institution:	National Institutes of Health
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1917
	Death Date:	November 22, 2010

	Bernhard Witkop was a distinguished organic chemist who had made major contributions to biochemistry, pharmacology, and medical sciences. His research involved major contributions to the chemistry of familiar-sounding substances or processes, such as the isolation from the Colombian tree frog of the toxin batrachotoxin, a godsend to electrophysiologists. He made important contributions to research on antiviral agents, interferon, dopamine, genetically engineered proteins and metabolic pathways. His cyanogen bromide cleavage reaction made possible the production of the first 100 Kg of engineered insulin by Eli Lilly. In Dr. Witkop's paper "Mind Over Matter" he assumes "the uneasy role of the scientist as philosopher" and presents a scholarly and profound contribution on this topic so central to most philosophers. Later in his life Dr. Witkop dedicated efforts to historical biography. He worked at the National Institutes of Health since 1987, where he is Scholar Emeritus. A native of Germany, Dr. Witkop held Ph.D. (1940) and Sc.D. (1946) degrees from the University of Munich.

47	Name:	Dr. M. Gordon Wolman
	Institution:	Johns Hopkins University
	Year Elected:	1999
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	105. Physical Earth Sciences
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1924
	Death Date:	February 24, 2010

	M. Gordon Wolman is the B. Howell Griswold, Jr. Professor of Geography and International Affairs at The Johns Hopkins University. A native of Baltimore, Dr. Wolman was educated at Johns Hopkins (B.A., 1949) and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1953) and has taught at Johns Hopkins since 1962, prior to which he worked for the U.S. Geological Survey. Dr. Wolman's research has focused on human activities and their interactions with the natural processes impacting the earth's surface, specifically, the control of quantity and quality of streamflow and the behavior of rivers. His studies of environmental processes have involved him in work on environmental policies dealing with water, land and energy resources. Dr. Wolman's work has been recognized with many awards including the Cullman Geography Medal of the American Geography Society, the Rachel Carson Award, the Ian Campbell Medal of the American Geological Institute, the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America and the Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union. A past president of the Geological Society of America, Dr. Wolman was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1988 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2002. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999.

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