Wilfrid Rall computational neuroscience research collection

Wilfrid Rall (1922-2018) trained as a physicist at Yale University (BS 1943) and participated in the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago during WW II. He studied biophysics at the University of Chicago (MS 1948) and studied physiology with John Carew Eccles at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand (PhD 1953). From 1955-56 he worked with David Lloyd and Carleton Hunt at the Rockefeller Institute and Bernard Katz in London then joined the Navy Research Laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1957 Rall joined the Mathematical Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health, where he worked for the remainder of his career.

Rall is regarded as one of the founders of modern neuroscience. His work in establishing the integrative functions of neuronal dendrites included developing the use of cable theory, as well as passive and active compartmental modeling of the neuron, which provided a foundation for the field of computational neuroscience.

Gordon Shepherd (1933-2022) was professor of neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine. He received his BS at Iowa State College in 1955, MD at Harvard in 1959, and PhD at Oxford in 1962 and completed postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, MIT, and the Karolinska Institute. His work included introducing the olfactory system as a model for analyzing the properties of neurons and synapses in the brain and the formation of neural images of olfactory molecules. His research contributed to the understanding of properties of neuronal dendrites and spines, olfactory processing, and development of the new fields of computational neuroscience, brain microcircuits, neuroinformatics, and neurogastronomy.

Shepherd's publications include Synaptic Organization of the Brain(5 ed.), Neurobiology (3 ed.), Handbook of Brain Microcircuits, Neurogastronomy, Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine, Creating Modern Neuroscience, and Mosso's Circulation of Blood in the Human Brain. He has been chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology and the Journal of Neuroscience and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.