Gerald Edelman was born in the United States in 1929. Edelman received a Bachelor of Science from Ursinus College in Pennsylvania in 1950. He then attended the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania where he received a MD degree in 1954.
In 1957, Edelman joined the Rockefeller Institute and received a PhD degree three years later. He remained at the Rockefeller Institute as Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and then Dean and started work in his own laboratory. His early studies on the structure and diversity of antibodies led him to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1972.
Edelman became a professor of neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute in 1992. He also founded and directed The Neurosciences Institute, a nonprofit research center in San Diego. His research included detailed studies of the fundamental cellular processes of transcription and translation in eukaryotic cells and the development and organization of higher brain functions in terms of a process known as neuronal group selection.
Edelman delivered a series of three Beatty lectures in Februrary 1990 on the theme of "Morphology and Mind" titled "Topobiology: The Problem of Morphology", "Neural Darwinism: The Problem of Perception", and "The Remembered Present: Problems of Consciousness".
Image: Rockefeller Archive Center
