Hallowell Davis

One of my teachers, Dr. Hallowell Davis, was an extraordinary scientist. And also an extraordinary human being. He was Director of Research at the CID (Central Institute for the Deaf), in Saint Louis.

During his Harvard days, in the 30's, he helped to develop electroencephalography. At CID he studied cochlear physiology and, among many other things, discovered the summating potentials.

He was the father of electric response audiometry, on which he was already working when I left Saint Louis. I remember saying in a meeting, in the late 60's, that soon we would be able to measure auditory thresholds in children using computers. Everyone thought that it was my imagination, that I was too involved in science fiction...

One of my theses, The Evolution of a Sensory Organ, was almost totally based on Dr.Davis’ teachings.

Besides being a great neurophysiologist, he also had an extraordinary sense of humor. On the wall of his office at the Central Institute for the Deaf was a sign that read:

Don’t confuse me with facts; my mind is made up.

I am very proud to have contributed a chapter for the book that his disciples wrote as a gift for his 80th birthday: Hearing and Davis – essays honoring Hallowell Davis. 

Next: The Labyrinth

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Otology and Neurotology - Past, Present and Future - II

Image
Part II During the 48th Brazilian Congress of Otorhinolaryngology there was a presentation named The Future of Otolaryngology. I decided to include in my list of blogs this slightly expanded version of my presentation. Some of the names mentioned here have been presented in other pages of this blog. Ádám Politzer Politzer is celebrated as a pioneer of modern otology in the History of Medicine. For many years he was the Professor of Otolaryngology of the University of Vienna and attracted many physicians from different countries, influencing and training thousands of otologists from all over the world. He invented many medical instruments for the diagnosis and treatment of ear diseases. He created the ventilation tubes for the aeration of the middle ear after paracentesis and created the otoscope. He made the first observation that the middle ear ossicles vibrate to sound stimuli.  Wladimir Michailowitsch Bechterew An important Russian neurophysiologist, creator of
Read more

Malpighi

Image
Marcello Malpighi was the first anatomist to incorporate the microscope in his studies. Marcello Malpighi - Wikimedia Commons The microscope was invented by Hans Jansen, a Dutch spectacle-maker, in 1590 and was modified by Galileo in 1609. Its possibilities for biological studies, however, came approximately 50 years later, when Robert Hooke improved it. Then Malpighi, Hooke, Nehemiah Grew and Antoine van Leeuwenhoek  began their investigations using the new tool. Hooke studied mainly insects, and was the creator of the word cell for describing biological organisms. Grew was a vegetable anatomist. Leeuwenhoek manufactured many microscopes (of high quality for that time) and actually made important discoveries, such as bacteria   (large Selenomonads from the human mouth), the vacuoles of the cells, the banded pattern of muscular fibers and the spermatozoa (for this discovery he had serious disagreements with the Dutch theologists). Hooke's microscope, employed by Malpighi -
Read more

Jack Urban

Image
This is my first blog for 2016, and once again I want to thank all my readers and wish them a Happy New Year. A little late, isn’t it? But my wishes are sincere. Today I want to honor a friend that died many years ago. His name was Jack Urban. He was an optical and mechanical  engineer. Jack Urban (right) and Charles Graser, one of the first patients to receive a cochlear implant He developed many instruments for the House Medical Group in Los Angeles, including accessories for the surgical microscopes. But Jack was not the type of person from whom you would simply “order” something. He would come to the operating room so that he could understand what the surgeon wanted. And then he would manufacture a prototype and would again enter the operating room to see how it worked and whether he had to make any changes. Today many manufacturers of medical instruments sell “microdebriders,” often called “shavers.” These are instruments designed to cut and suction small bits of tissue
Read more