American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Residency
International (1)
Resident (2)
Class
Subdivision
208. Plant Sciences[X]
1Name:  Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner
 Institution:  University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley
 Year Elected:  1998
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  208. Plant Sciences
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1942
   
 
Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D., is Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco where he has worked since 1972. He received his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Pennsylvania and his postgraduate clinical training at UCSF. From 1969-72, he served in the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health. Editor of 12 books and author of over 350 research articles, Prusiner's contributions to scientific research have been internationally recognized. Dr. Prusiner discovered an unprecedented class of pathogens that he named prions. Prions are infectious proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans. Dr. Prusiner discovered a novel disease paradigm when he showed prions cause disorders in humans that can be manifest as (1) sporadic, (2) inherited and (3) infectious illnesses. Dr. Prusiner demonstrated that prions are formed when a normal, benign cellular protein acquires an altered shape. Dr. Prusiner's proposals of multiple shapes or conformations for a single protein as well as the concept of an infectious protein were considered heretical. Prior to Dr. Prusiner's discoveries, proteins were thought to possess only one biologically active conformation. Remarkably, the more common neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases have been found over the past two decades to be, like the prion diseases, disorders of protein processing. Prusiner is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society, London. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Potamkin Prize for Alzheimer's Disease Research from the American Academy of Neurology (1991); the Richard Lounsberry Award for Extraordinary Scientific Research in Biology and Medicine from the National Academy of Sciences (1993); the Gairdner Foundation International Award (1993); the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1994); the Paul Ehrlich Prize from the Federal Republic of Germany (1995); the Wolf Prize in Medicine from the State of Israel (1996); the Keio International Award for Medical Science (1996); the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1997); the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1997); and the National Medal of Science (2010). Prusiner holds 50 issued or allowed United States patents all of which are assigned to the University of California. His memoir, Madness and Memory, was published in 2014.
 
2Name:  Dr. Larry R. Squire
 Institution:  University of California, San Diego
 Year Elected:  1998
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  208. Plant Sciences
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1941
   
 
Larry R. Squire is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Diego, and Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did postdoctoral study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine before coming to UCSD. Dr. Squire investigates the organization and neurological foundations of memory. His work involves the study of neurological patients, healthy volunteers, and rodents and combines the traditions of cognitive science and neuroscience. His publications include approximately 400 research articles and two books: Memory and Brain (1987) and Memory: From Mind to Molecules (with Eric Kandel, 2nd Edition, 2008). He is Editor-in-Chief of the textbook Fundamental Neuroscience (3rd Edition) and The Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. He served as President of the Society for Neuroscience and is also a William James Fellow of the American Psychological Society. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the William Middleton Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health, the McGovern Award, the Metropolitan Life Award, the Herbert Crosby Warren Medal, and the American Philosophical Society’s Karl Lashley Award. Dr. Squire was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1998.
 
3Name:  Dr. Semir Zeki
 Institution:  University College London
 Year Elected:  1998
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  208. Plant Sciences
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1940
   
 
Semir Zeki is professor of neurobiology at University College London. His main research interest is the organization of the primate visual brain. His early studies on the monkey showed that different visual cortical areas are specialized for different tasks of motion, color and form. This led to the influential theory of functional specialization, not localization, in cortical areas. He then used Land's retinex techniques to study the relation of visual cortical neurons to wavelength and color, which led to the idea that color vision is a construction of the brain, not the retina. Recently he has used imaging methods to show that the principle of cortical area specialization is true also in the human brain. Dr. Zeki published his first scientific paper in 1967 and since then has written over 150 papers and three books, including A Vision of the Brain (1993), Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain (1999) and La Quête de l'essentiel, which he co-authored with the late French painter Balthus. In 1994, he began to study the neural basis of creativity and the aesthetic appreciation of art. In 2001, he founded the Institute of Neuroesthetics, based mainly in Berkeley, California. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (London), a member of the Academia Europeae and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. His awards include the Minerva Foundation Prize, the LVMH Science pour l'art Prize, the Rank Prize in opto-electronics, the Electronic Imaging Award, the Koetser Prize and the King Faisal International Prize in Biology.
 
Election Year
1998[X]