The Human Brain during the First Trimester 31- to 33-mm Crown-Rump Lengths (ePub)

Joseph Altman, now deceased, was born in Hungary and migrated with his family via Germany and Australia to the United States. In New York, he became a graduate student in psychology in the laboratory of Hans-Lukas Teuber, earning a PhD in 1959 from New York University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, and later joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1968, he accepted a position as a professor of biology at Purdue University. During his career, he collaborated closely with Shirley A. Bayer. From the early 1960s to 2016, he published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, monographs, and online free books that emphasized developmental processes in brain anatomy and function. His most important discovery was adult neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons in the adult brain. This discovery was made in the early 1960s while he was based at MIT and was largely ignored in favor of the prevailing dogma that neurogenesis is limited to prenatal development. After Dr. Bayer's paper proved that new neurons are adding to granule cells in the hippocampus, his monumental discovery became more accepted. During the 1990s, new researchers "rediscovered" and confirmed his original finding. Adult neurogenesis has recently been proven to occur in the dentate gyrus, olfactory bulb, and striatum through the measurement of Carbon-14-the levels of which changed during nuclear bomb testing throughout the 20th century-in postmortem human brains. Today, many laboratories around the world are continuing to study the importance of adult neurogenesis in brain function. In 2011, Dr. Altman was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award, an annual prize given in Spain by the Prince of Asturias Foundation to individuals, entities, or organizations from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, and public affairs. In 2012, he received the International Prize for Biology, an annual award from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of research in fundamental biology." This prize is one of the most prestigious honors a scientist can receive. Dr. Altman died in 2016, and Dr. Bayer continues the work they started over 50 years ago. In his honor, she has set up the Altman Prize, awarded each year to an outstanding young researcher in developmental neuroscience by JSPS.