Robert U. Muller—In memory

“Extremely direct” is the essence of Bob Muller’s signature style. His journey toward his intensive focused study of place cells was anything but direct, veering from experimental psychology through membrane biophysics and ending in the temporal lobe. Bob was a New Yorker. Born in Queens in 1942, he went through New York City public schools, Stuyvesant High School (where he was classmate of Lynn Nadel) and City College (where he was a classmate of John O’Keefe’s wife, Eileen). Inspired by Sam Feldman at City College, he journeyed to Canada, to McMaster University to study physiological psychology with Case Vanderwolf. Vanderwolf ’s seminal studies of the behavioral correlates of the theta rhythm were Bob’s first taste of the hippocampus. Incapable of being outside New York for more than 2 years, Bob retreated and began Ph.D. studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he again worked with Sam Feldman. Bob and Sam were lifelong fast friends, but in the lab they were a volatile mixture. In addition, while at Einstein, Bob’s mathematical, reductionist side took hold, and he became fascinated with membrane biophysics. In the early 1970s, he switched labs and began working with Allen Finkelstein, with whom Bob invented his middle initial “U,” making his professional name read “Are You Muller?” Bob did his Ph.D. thesis work on ion channels in artificial membranes. Never forgetting his interest in psychology, Bob focused on membrane mechanisms of memory and began a decades-long collaboration with Olaf Andersen investigating these issues.