Morre um ícone da Neurociência – Vernon Moutcastle

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/obituary_for_vernon_mountcastle

Abaixo, trecho retirado de seu obituário preparado pela Johns Hopkins. Vale lembrar que ele foi orientador de pós-doutorado de Eduardo Oswaldo Cruz, um de nossos Medalhistas Neurociências Brasil.  Segue o trecho do obituário:

“Vernon Mountcastle, one of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s giants of the 20th century, died peacefully at his northern Baltimore home on Sunday, Jan. 11, with Nancy, his wife of seven decades, and family at his bedside. He was 96. Mountcastle was universally acknowledged as the “father of neuroscience” and served Johns Hopkins with extraordinary dedication for nearly 65 years.

A 1942 graduate of the school of medicine and a member of the faculty since 1948, Mountcastle served as director of the Department of Physiology and head of the Philip Bard Laboratories of Neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins from 1964 to 1980. He later became one of the founding members of Johns Hopkins’ Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, where he continued to work until his retirement at 87.

Colleagues remember his dedication to the professional development of neuroscientists, fiercely focused work ethic and devotion to collaborative research.

Mountcastle once was dubbed the “Jacques Cousteau of the cortex” for his revolutionary research delving into the unknown depths of the brain and establishing the basis for modern neuroscience.

In 1957, he made the breakthrough discovery that revolutionized the concept of how the brain is built. He found that the cells of the cerebral cortex are organized in vertical columns, extending from the surface of the brain down through six layers of the cortex, each column processing a specific kind of information.”