Gerald Edelman | |
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Born | Gerald Maurice Edelman July 1, 1929 New York City, U.S. |
Died | May 17, 2014 La Jolla, California, U.S. | (aged 84)
Education | Ursinus College (BS) University of Pennsylvania (MD) Rockefeller University (PhD) |
Spouse |
Maxine M. Morrison (m. 1950) |
Awards | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1972) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Immunology Neuroscience Philosophy of mind |
Doctoral students | Paul David Gottlieb, Olaf Sporns |
Gerald Maurice Edelman (/ˈɛdəlmən/; July 1, 1929 – May 17, 2014) was an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system.[1] Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules.[2] In interviews, he has said that the way the components of the immune system evolve over the life of the individual is analogous to the way the components of the brain evolve in a lifetime. There is a continuity in this way between his work on the immune system, for which he won the Nobel Prize, and his later work in neuroscience and in philosophy of mind.