Hans-Lukas Teuber: A Remembrance

Abstract

Hans-Lukas Teuber was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern neuroscience. It is a testimony to how rapidly the field has developed that his name is virtually unknown to the current generation of students. Even in the department that he founded at MIT students are largely unaware of his accomplishments or why the department library is named in his honor. However, until his death in a swimming accident on January 4, 1977, Teuber was a virtually legendary figure at MIT. His course, Introduction to Psychology and Brain Science, course 9.00 in the MIT curriculum, was an elective that was taken by half the entire undergraduate student body. Known as “Nine Hundred” by the students, the course was a dazzling display of Teuber’s brilliance and sense of humor. In it, he used the three prongs of the Greek symbol, Ψ, psi to symbolize the goals of the MIT Department of Psychology, which he founded in 1964. The first prong was physiological psychology or neurobiology. The second prong was general experimental psychology with a strong emphasis on perception, and the third was cognitive psychology, especially psycholinguistics with an emphasis on development and motor control. Course Nine Hundred was a life changing experience for many MIT undergraduates including myself. In the first semester of my junior year as a fledgling physics major, I took Nine Hundred and was immediately enthralled by Teuber’s quest to understand the relationship between brain and behavior. The MIT Psychology Department was housed in a just renovated, old manufacturing building, E10 (all MIT buildings have numbers). There was ample space, some of the faculty for the new program had not yet been hired, and it would be several years before the program became established with an undergraduate major. I was taking another course in psychology as well out of curiosity and the teacher mentioned me to Teuber midway during the Neuropsychol Rev (2009) 19:4–7 DOI 10.1007/s11065-009-9084-3