I found out he died after I returned from a long trip. But it turns out he died just 1 day prior to a conversation I was having with one of the researchers at the conference. I don't often get to talk about neural darwinism ... and never with anyone in the field of neuropsych. That researcher had just come from a neuropsych meeting and I wanted to know how that crowd felt about Edelman's later ideas (including his collaboration with Tononi). He had no idea how the others felt. But it was an interesting coincidence that we'd talked about him the day after his death.
I know some people who think his later work was ... muddled. But, personally, I'm very grateful for the brave ones who put their ideas out there despite whatever "consensus" they might face. I'll miss him.
On 06/26/2014 01:10 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
The beginning of the obituary in Science: Gerald M. Edelman, who was born in New York in 1929, died at his home in La Jolla, California, on 17 May 2014. With him, biology has lost a great scientist and something even rarer—a profound thinker. Edelman's work in the 1960s revealed the chemical structure of antibody molecules, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972 with Rodney Porter. In the 1970s, Edelman turned to studying how cells stick to each other, which led to the discovery of cell adhesion molecules (CAMs). Afterward, Edelman directed much of his efforts to understanding “how the brain gives rise to the mind” and formulated a general theory of brain function—the theory of neuronal group selection.
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