Republication of The Journal of Physiology (2009) 587, 2855: Expressions of gratitude to The Journal of Physiology, to our colleagues and students, and to the fates that placed us in such a great time to be scientists
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Torsten and I obviously feel it an immense honour to be celebrated in this way by The Journal of Physiology. It was there that we published our first papers, in many ways still our farourite ones. We found J Physiol a wonderful place to publish: among other things the figures were beautifully done, the reviews were always fair (i.e. laudatory). Our 1959 paper's submission was accepted by a letter, written we think by William Rushton, that began ‘Congratulations upon a very fine paper…’, and made no suggestions at all for changes. We were pleased because that paper had gone through 11 drafts and had even passed muster by Ed Furshpan, our fiercest critic. Above all, The Journal didn't follow the bizarre American style of ordering periods and closing quotation marks at ends of sentences. We hated to change journals, but felt forced to because at that time the strictly alphabetical order of authors’ names in JP, though perhaps an advantage for me, was hard on Torsten. One could hardly expect Harvard deans or promotion committees to know the ways of the British. The problem came to a climax in the case of Ed Furshpan and Taro Furukawa, who had to change journals so Taro could get promoted in Japan. We have always felt that any success we had over the years was a matter of sheer and consistent good luck, at every turn. We were roughly the same age, our abilities were complementary, and our scientific outlooks were similar. We started at a time when single cell recording from CNS was just taking off, and at first we had the field of visual cortex more or less to ourselves, aided by the myth that our kind of research was difficult and tedious. We did nothing to dispel that myth and so had little competition for over a decade. NIH support was generous and we never had to spend more than a few days every half-decade writing grant proposals. Animals were cheap, and there were fewer hoops to jump through – no long, detailed animal-use protocols to write or gloves or masks to wear during experiments. Above all we worked in a wonderful setting, with the huge benefit of the wisdom and gentle guidance of Steve Kuffler (our leader, and later the head of our department), and the company of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students who were so good that we could ignore them and let them get on with their work.
Source: The Journal of Physiology
Author: David Hubel
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Neurology
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2028418812