His training through the early 1960s, in his chosen specialty of endocrinology and diabetes, began in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. After a Clinical Research Fellowship using the new technique of radioimmunoassay to measure growth hormone, he travelled as Fulbright Fellow to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, USA . His identification and report in the journal Nature of a growth horm...

Very early, there was an insight that explanation was crucial for system acceptance. I remember that in Buchannan’s and Shortliffe’s early work on medical consultation systems, the ability to create explanations was a number one requirement. Initially, it seemed that simple explanation mechanisms might be sufficient, and tracing the rules used by an expert system is straightforward. Fairly soon...

David Baltimore studied viruses and the immune system in the US during the twentieth century. In 1975, Baltimore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering reverse transcriptase, the enzyme used to transfer information from RNA to DNA. The discovery of reverse transcriptase contradicted the central dogma of biology at the time, which stated that the transfer of inform...

O n the surface it seems implausible that a colonial scientist could be characterized as a mathematician by today’s standards. Yet the single aim of this note is to provide evidence that two of David Rittenhouse’s papers from 220 years ago qualify him as a modern analyst. Rittenhouse (1732–1796) had no formal education and never earned a degree. Except for a brief appointment as professor of as...

T he passage of a single C. elegans cell through two basement membranes to connect the worm's uterus and vulva might seem an unlikely model for tumor metastasis. But David Sherwood— who fi rst characterized the process as a post-doc in Paul Sternberg's laboratory at Caltech—thinks that the system can teach us a great deal about cell invasion events in both normal development and cancer. Sherwoo...

In recent years, advances in science and low-cost permanent storage have resulted in the availability of massive data sets. Together with advances in machine learning, this data has the potential to lead to many new breakthroughs. For example, high-throughput genomic and proteomic experiments can be used to enable personalized medicine. Large data sets of search queries can be used to improve i...

Hydraulic microelectrode advancermade by David Hubel. David Hubel was a giant in our field, yet he waswarm, friendly, and humble in person. He and Torsten Wiesel, following in the footsteps of their mentor Steve Kuffler, discovered fundamental principles of information processing in the brain and fundamental principles of how the brain wires itself up. I think many people in the field see David...

Being admitted unexpectedly to hospital is depersonalising and distressing. This is compounded for the one inpatient in eight who has delirium. Delirium affects 20-30% of over 65s during acute admission.We should domore to prevent delirium, ensure that we don’t miss it, to reverse it, explain it, and minimise its impact. Clinical staff need support to do this. Risk increases if you’re older and...

David Hillis was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and grew up in the Belgian Congo, India, and the United States. His undergraduate training was at Baylor University (BS 1980) and graduate work was at the University of Kansas (PhD 1985). He is currently the Roark Centennial Professor at the University of Texas (Austin). He served as the first Director of the School of Biological Sciences at the Uni...

“Interdisciplinary” has become a buzzword in science in recent years. According to David Heeger, a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University (NYU), “You don’t do interdisciplinary science by putting a physicist and a biologist in the same office. Nor do you make interdisciplinary science happen by taking a grant proposal and assigning it for review to people from a diffe...