W. Maxwell Cowan

William Maxwell Cowan , called Max Cowan, (born September 27, 1931 in Johannesburg , † June 30, 2002 ) was a South African-American neurobiologist and neuroanatomist.

Life

Cowan studied medicine (especially anatomy) at the Witwatersrand University with Raymond Dart and from 1953 with Wilfrid Le Gros Clark (1895–1971) at the University of Oxford , where he earned his MD in 1956 and his PhD in 1958. He already specialized in research in neuroanatomy in South Africa, but at the insistence of his parents he also acquired the usual medical degrees ( Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery 1958). He was a faculty member at Oxford from 1953 to 1964.

When the anatomy department turned to other fields of research (neuroendocrinology) after Le Gros Clark's retirement, Cowan went to the USA from the mid-1960s, where he first spent a sabbatical year at Washington University in St. Louis in 1965 , then professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and from 1968 back at Washington University. From 1968 to 1980 he was chairman of the anatomy department (later the anatomy and neurobiology department).

Cowan was Vice President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies from 1982 to 1986 , where he was director of the Developmental Neurobiology Laboratory from 1980. At the same time he was a professor at Washington University until 1987, where he became Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor in 1986. From 1987 to 2000 he was Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . He was then Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience at both the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

At Oxford he worked closely with Tom Powell , first in neuroanatomical studies of retrograde degeneration (the death of the neocortex-to- thalamus axonal connections and associated nerve cells in the thalamus in a patient who had one hemisphere removed and who died soon after). They characterized the connections between the thalamus and the striatum and developed new techniques to discover connections between the parts of the brain. In particular, using a staining technique by Walle Nauta , they discovered connections from the brain ( centrifugal fibers from the isthmooptic nucleus) to special retina cells ( amacrine cells ) in the pigeon's brain, which proved that the brain had an effect on the cells of the perception system.

In the USA he and David Gottlieb (based on the pioneering work of Bernice Grafstein ) developed methods of representing axonal connections with radioactively labeled amino acids in order to track axonal transport, and with Gary Banker he developed cell cultures of hippocampal cells.

One of Cowan's most important discoveries was that during the development of the brain in the embryo and small child, not only nerve cells are formed, but numerous nerve cells die and axonal connections are eliminated. In particular, he also followed (after the pioneering work of Viktor Hamburger and Rita Levi-Montalcini ) the role that various nerve growth factors play in this.

Cowan was President of the Society for Neuroscience in 1977-78 . In 1976 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1981 the National Academy of Sciences , 1982 the Royal Society and 1987 the American Philosophical Society . In 2001 he received the Ralph W. Gerard Prize . From 1992 he was also affiliated with the Charles A. Dana Foundation, where he was a founding member (and with James D. Watson leader) and was vice chairman of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives.

He was the founding editor of the Journal of Neuroscience (from 1980 to 1987) and the Annual Review of Neuroscience (from 1978) and from 1969 to 1980 editor of the Journal of Comparative Neurology.

He was married and had a daughter and two sons. One of his fellow students in South Africa was Sydney Brenner , with whom he was friends.

Geoffrey Raisman (in Oxford) is one of his PhD students .

Web links

• Obituary at the Society for Neuroscience by Thomas Jessel, Eric Kandel
• Obituary on the HHMI
• Geoffrey Raisman, Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society, Volume 54, 2008, p. 117, pdf