The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1962, Vol. 5, No. 4 the Rockefeller University
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Rockefeller University Digital Commons @ RU The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly The Rockefeller University Newsletters Winter 1962 The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1962, vol. 5, no. 4 The Rockefeller University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/ rockefeller_institute_quarterly Recommended Citation The Rockefeller University, "The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1962, vol. 5, no. 4" (1962). The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly. Book 20. http://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/rockefeller_institute_quarterly/20 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the The Rockefeller University Newsletters at Digital Commons @ RU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cmpary Hall and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Hall on a wintry day are seen in the couer drawing. Seminar and conference rooms, and the guest suites, lounge, and refectory of the Abby ,q look out upon the snow-covered mall lined with plane trees. THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE QUARTERLY THEROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE PRESS 66th Street and York Avenue, New York 21 fore. Schaub is still at the Institute, and Electronic Techniques for he provides invaluable continuity with the past. Yang returned to China in 1956, and was soon replaced by Dr. Robert L. Schoenfeld, an engineer who was drawn Research in The Institute into biological problems by an interest in psychology. Dr. Schoenfeld had worked FEWBIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS are fibers were completed, using the newly on the development of electroencephalo- carried on today that do not depend in developed vacuum-tube amplifiers to drive graphic apparatus at the College of Physi- some important way on electronic tech- oscillographs of various types. Bronk went cians and Surgeons at Columbia Univer- niques for instrumentation, observation, on to become Professor of Biophysics in sity after which he went to Brooklyn Poly- recording, or analysis of data. Indeed, the University of Pennsylvania in 1929 technic Institute for graduate study. electronics has come to play a central role, and to organize and direct the Eldridge Hervey, in Woods Hole, works on long- not only in contemporary research, but in Reeves Johnson Foundation for Research term projects; Schoenfeld's group in New all of modern life. It is therefore impera- in Medical Physics there. York, under Hervey's direction, carries on tive that resources for study and use of It was only with difficulty that Bronk development and research which require electronic techniques be an integral part could obtain permission to include physics day-to-day consultation. Some of these of an institution for graduate study and and physiology in his gradbate study. To- undertakings are modest, such as a circuit research such as The Rockefeller Institute. day, physics, electronics, and biology to- to modulate an optical stimulator for use As will be seen below, the Electronics gether form the common background of in the physiology course. Others are more Laboratory has been of great help to many many. For example, after World War I1 elaborate, for example, the design of a re- of the graduate- students in their doctoral several young physicists who had been at liable electronic programmed control for investigations; for most of them it has pro- the Radiation Laboratory turned to bio- Professor Lyman Craig's countercurrent vided help and guidance in dealing with physics. Among them were Dr. C. M. Con- distribution apparatus. techniques that might be regarded by nelly, now associated with Drs. Brink and many as the exclusive province of the nar- Bronk at the Institute, and Dr. E. E Mac- A DIGITAL PROGRAMMER row specialist. Nichol, now in the Department of Bio- Still other projects involve considerable ~esearchat the Institute in fields as var- physics at The Hopkins. Both men went to research by the Electronics Laboratory. ied as the physiology of the visual system, the Johnson Foundation in the University One such long-term project has been un- lipid metabolism, the control of infectious of Pennsylvania, then directed by Presi- dertaken in collaboration with Dr. Hart- diseases, and the structure of proteins dent Bronk, where they were also associ- line and Dr. Floyd Ratliff to automate a makes heavy use of electronics and has ated with Frank Brink and H. K. Hartline, large portion of the collection and analysis confronted the physicists and engineers in now members of the Institute faculty. of the data from neurophysiological inves- the Electronics Laboratory with some tigations. Of necessity much of the data is challenging problems, some of which are EXPANSION OF ELECTRONICS obtained by electronic techniques, and described below. A number of those who had been as- over the years many means have been de- When Detlev Bronk became President sociated with President Detlev Bronk in vised for recording and partly analyzing of the Institute in 1953 and began the biophysical investigations joined him when the observations. It now appears possible creation of its school of graduate study, he came to The Rockefeller Institute. to integrate many of these techniques into one of his first moves was to strengthen Among them were Dr. Brink, Dr. Hartline, a programmed system which will greatly an embryonic Electronics Laboratory that and Dr. Connelly. Their needs for elec- increase the efficiency and variety of prac- had been established many years before tronic assistance led Dr. Bronk to add tical experiments. This was one of the first to serve the needs of the neurophysiolo- strength to the Electronics Laboratory by problems undertaken by Robert Schoen- gists. President Bronk was acutely aware placing it for the first time under a pro- feld when he joined the Institute's staff in of the growing importance of physics and fessional electronic engineer, John El Her- 1957, and it is still under way. electronics in biology for he was trained vey. Hervey, who had been Assistant Pro- Hartline's studies of the visual system in electrical engineering and as a gradu- fkssor of Biophysics at the Cornell Medical have for many years centered around ob- ate student had obtained a Ph.D. degree College and most recently Associate Pro- servations of the electrical response of and in both physics and physiology. He had fessor at The Hopkins, became Senior interactions among individual light recep- gone as a National Research Council Fel- Electronic Engineer at the Institute's tors in the compound eye of the horseshoe low to England, where his knowledge of Jacques Loeb Laboratory in Woods Hole, crab, Limulus. In this work he and his co- engineering and physics were major assets Massachusetts. Under his supervision was workers have been faced with an increas- in the neurophysiological investigations an assistant, resident in the New York ing complexity of experimental manipula- he and E. D. Adrian (now Lord Adrian shop, Dr. C. Yang, from the Johnson Foun- tions, and electronic programming of the and the Institute's newest Trustee) carried dation in the University of Pennsylvania. experiments has become a necessity. In out at Cambridge. In the year 1928-1929 Yang was aided by Warren Schaub, who certain experiments, as many as three their classical experiments on the record- had come to the Institute to assist the neu- light beams are used and the impulses ing of electrical activity from single nerve rophysiology laboratories several years be- (continued on page two) ELECTRONIC TECHNIQUES undertaking,- Schoenfeld and his associ- (continued from page one) ates have wanted to obtain practical expe- rience with the components of this elab- from three nerve fibers, each associated orate system. One such "finger exercise," with a separate visual receptor, are re- as Schoenfeld calls it, was developed co- corded. Each light beam is switched on operatively by Laurence Eisenberg of and off for variable timed intervals during the Electronics Laboratory and Dr. Floyd an experimental run. These intervals are Ratliff. They have devised equipment interchanged between the light beams in which automatically displays in numerical successive runs according to a complex form the time of arrival of nerve impulses, pattern. The timed intervals must be pro- or the time interval between successive grammed in order to test the mutual inter- impulses. Heretofore the almost micro- action of the stimuli and to control the av- scopic photographic traces of high-fre- erage illumination so that it will remain quency impulses had to be analyzed in relatively constant for all three receptors. terms of frequency and time of arrival by Carrying out and recording the results of tedious measurement on an optical device these intricate experiments involves an Hartline devised from a ruling engine like elaborate sequence of switching and ad- that used by Rowland for 'producing dif- justing which can better be done electron- fraction gratings at The Johns Hopkins Above is the jewel-like compound eye of the ically than by hand. University. So lengthy was the analysis of horseshoe crab ( Limulus) , about twenty times As a first step, Schoenfeld set himself the data that many experiments which natural size, used by Professor Hartline in studies the task of understanding the variety of could easily be performed were passed by of the neurophysiology of uision. On the opposite electronic equipment used by Hartline for lack of time for processing the data. page is the electrdnic apparatus used to analyze and his co-workers and the different pos- Now the time intervals are computed, dis- the response of any of the thousand or more re- ceptors in the facets of the eye when they are sible experimental uses to which it was played, and superimposed photographi- stimulated by light. The technician is placing cally on the oscilloscope record of the nerve put. This task was not simple, not only be- a facet under the light beam.