About Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman (; July 1, 1929 – May 17, 2014) was an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules. In interviews, he has said that the way the components of the immune system evolve over the life of the individual is analogous to the way the components of the brain evolve in a lifetime. There is a continuity in this way between his work on the immune system, for which he won the Nobel Prize, and his later work in neuroscience and in philosophy of mind. == Early life and education == Gerald Edelman was born in 1929 in Ozone Park, Queens, New York, to Jewish parents, physician Edward Edelman, and Anna (née Freedman) Edelman, who worked in the insurance industry. He studied violin for years, but eventually realized that he did not have the inner drive needed to pursue a career as a concert violinist, and decided to go into medical research instead. He attended public schools in New York, graduating from John Adams High School, and then attended Ursinus College, where he graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in 1950. He received an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1954. == Career == After a year at the Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics, Edelman became a resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital; he then practiced medicine in France while serving with US Army Medical Corps. In 1957, Edelman joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research as a graduate fellow, working in the laboratory of Henry Kunkel and receiving a Ph.D. in 1960.
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