Seymour Benzer 1921–2007

It is now common knowledge that both “Nature” and “Nurture” determine animal behavior. But even as late as the 1970s, the concept that genes have anything to do with behavior was not universally accepted. In the face of such skepticism, Seymour Benzer, working tirelessly at Caltech, refused to join the philosophical debate and, in the way so familiar to those who knew him, shrugged his shoulders and said plainly, “Let the science speak for itself.” With characteristic simplicity, he argued that by holding the environment constant one could generate single-gene mutations disrupting complex behaviors, such as learning and memory, and thereby uncover their molecular basis. If that wasn’t chutzpah enough, he proposed that these answers could come from studying the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. “Let the science speak for itself” is a mantra that celebrates the life of Seymour Benzer, who passed away at the age of 86 on November 30, 2007 (Figure 1). Seymour is survived by his wife, Carol Miller, his son, Alexander, and his step-sons, Renny and Douglas Feldman. Seymour was married to Dorothy “Dotty” Vlosky from 1942 until her death in 1978 and, from this marriage, is survived by two daughters, Barbara Freidin and Martha Goldberg, and four grandchildren. Seymour began his studies on fly behavior in the late 1960s with a clever adaptation of a chemical assay, the counter current separation technique, to isolate mutants with specific behavioral deficits resulting in abnormalities in the response to light. In these early screens, he isolated fly mutants with defects in the