Please
join us in
Celebrating the Life of
W.
Ross Adey
Tuesday,
September 21, 2004
Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience
and Genetics Research Center
First Floor Conference Room, 1357
4:00 P.M. - 7:00 P.M.
PROGRAM
WELCOMING
REMARKS
· Christopher
Evans & Michael Levine
Interim
Co-Directors, UCLA Brain Research Institute
REMEMBERING ROSS
· John Schlag,
Professor of Neurobiology, will introduce
family, friends and colleagues who will
share memories of Ross.
· John Hanley,
Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry &
Biobehavioral Sciences
· Eva M. Kavan,
Professor Emerita of Anesthesiology
· Ulrich Batzdorf,
Professor Emeritus of Surgery, Division
of Neurosurgery
· Thelma Estrin,
Professor Emerita of Computer Science
· Jacques Vidal,
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science
· Lawrence Kruger,
Emeritus Professor of Neurobiology
· Guests Who Would
Like to Share Memories
RECEPTION
A
time to reminisce, to renew acquaintances,
and to recall the contributions of a unique
scholar, scientist and human being.
If
you will be attending this memorial service,
please RSVP by September 10, 2004 to Linda
Maninger at the UCLA Brain Research Institute
at email lmaninger@mednet.ucla.edu,
phone (310) 825-6055, or mail to UCLA
Brain Research Institute, 1506C Gonda,
Box 951761, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1761.
For hotel accommodations in Westwood close
to UCLA, parking, and directions, click
here. |
|
W.
Ross Adey
1922 - 2004
As
a youth in the Adelaide, Australia, of his birth, William
Ross Adey, known universally to his many friends and
colleagues as “Ross,” had the advantages
of supportive parents and the freedom to indulge the
natural instincts of youth at the seashore, observing
marine life in tidal pools, reading books, and building
radios in the family basement. A precocious child, he
graduated from high school at age 14, and by 21 had
received degrees in medicine (M.B.) and surgery (B.S.)
from the University of Adelaide.
Recalling his early years in a June 2002 interview,
Adey said, “I was absolutely fascinated by radio.
I started building crystal sets as most kids did at
that age. It grew beyond that, and by the time I was
13 and 14, I had built quite a number of very large
vacuum tube sets, valves as we called them. I got an
amateur radio license when I was 17 years old.”
Throughout his life, radio framed his professional and
social activities far more than any ordinary hobby.
After
his first clinical position at Royal Adelaide Hospital
in 1944, he soon was aboard the cruiser Shropshire as
a Surgeon Lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy (1945–1946),
where he first encountered the new technology of radar.
Years later, Adey reminisced, “In rough seas on
cold nights, we would go into the radar hut and warm
ourselves with the stray emissions that drove the radar
antennas.”
His
first publication, based on research conducted for his
M.D. degree (1949, the University of Adelaide) was an
electromyographic study of a type of chronic myopathy.
The blending of electronics and scientific research
that would mark his career gave other early fruit with
construction of the first Australian six-channel recorder
of brain electrical signals, which was put to use for
clinical research on epileptic children and for laboratory
studies. His second publication, on the motor mechanisms
in the brain of anurans, was followed by a stream of
neuranatomical studies in species ranging from earthworms
to Australian marsupials and monkeys.
Upon
receiving the prestigious Nuffield Foundation Fellowship
in Medicine in 1950, Adey traveled to the University
of Oxford for postgraduate research on limbic system
structural anatomy and its pathways to the diencephalon.
The return trip from England to Adelaide included a
stopover in Los Angeles, which led, three years later,
to the start of a 23-year-long association with UCLA
Medical School, where he was Professor of Anatomy and
Physiology for 20 years. Even today, former students,
now senior practitioners and researchers, reflect with
awe on the clarity and comprehension evident in Adey’s
lectures in neuroanatomy. His lectures showed mastery
of neuroanatomical detail and complexity, neuroembryology,
and higher brain functions—all securely held in
memory and delivered in sculpted flowing prose.
Adey
and his colleagues at UCLA and the UCLA Brain Research
Institute made pioneering advances in the neuroanatomy
of the limbic system and its behavioral and pathological
correlates, measurements of the electrical properties
of brain tissue, spectral analysis of EEG, and the mechanisms
of memory.
Driven
by the need to obtain the physiological knowledge required
to fulfill President Kennedy’s commitment to put
a man on the moon in the 1960s, Adey, as Director of
the Space Biology Laboratory (1961 to 1974) at the UCLA
Brain Research Institute, conducted animal and human
research. His laboratory developed the technology for
biotelemetry from space that allowed EEG recordings
from astronauts Lovell and Borman showing the effects
of weightlessness on brain function.
Driven
by the idea that higher brain functions needed a distributed
information system that might be carried by the brain’s
own electrical activity, Adey and colleagues at the
UCLA Laboratory of Environmental Neurobiology, including
Suzanne Bawin, and Rochelle Gavalas-Medici, began to
study whether it might be possible to use modulated
radio- frequency fields as a means to probe brain function.
In his 2002 interview, Adey recalled the question that
led to the first studies with amplitude-modulated radio-frequency
fields. “If we made a radio signal look like a
brain wave, would it influence behavior? We showed in
cats very clearly, and monkeys to some extent, that
you could make the brain wave pattern follow the modulation
on the radio signal.”
Drawing
on the nonthermal nature of behavioral, in vivo, and
in vitro studies on the nervous system that sprang from
his laboratory, Adey took his quest beyond the fabric
of chemical reactions to delve into the physical organization
of biological tissue that could underpin responses to
very low energy levels. In this phase, conducted over
a period of more than 25 years at the Jerry L. Pettis
Memorial Veterans Medical Center (Loma Linda, California),
Loma Linda University, and the University of California,
Riverside, he and his colleagues addressed the effects
of extremely low frequency electric and magnetic fields,
and radio waves of the type used for mobile telephony.
Forward-looking and excited by science until his last
days, he took delight in the recent discovery by European
researchers of tunneling nanotubules because they made
manifest at the ultrastructural level further evidence
for a general physical plan for varieties of intercellular
communication.
Adey
wrote, spoke, and argued forcefully for a thorough and
fair examination of public health questions that he
saw conjoined with a nascent understanding of profound
questions in biophysics and cell biology. In pursuit
of the latter, he was determined that society not be
swayed by simplistic, and even worse, politically-motivated
ideas, in place of accurate and complete scientific
knowledge. No one who saw him in action will forget
the vigor of his speech and the sting of his polemics.
Those
who had the good fortune to be among his collaborators
were struck by his depth of perception, breadth of knowledge,
trust in the scientific method, inexhaustible energy,
patient attention to detail, and prodigious memory.
Adey’s
numerous friends worldwide knew of his affection and
fierce devotion to each of them; his gentlemanly grace
and refined manners; his ire when provoked; his patient
and deep caring for them and their family members; his
love of Shakespeare—quoted fully and precisely,
should the occasion arise; his love of the mountains
for both wintertime skiing and summertime hiking; his
pride in an accomplished family now with a seventh generation
training in medicine and science; and for the numerous
times he carried his tall, gaunt, frame 26 miles and
385 yards to the finish line, even into his late seventies.
Hotel
Accommodations
·
The UCLA Guest House is located close
to the Faculty Center, at 330 Young Drive East. Rates
for a single guest room with 1 queen bed is $105, a
guest room with 1 queen bed and 1 twin bed is $110;
no taxes applicable. For reservations call: (310) 825-2923
or email guesthouse@ha.ucla.edu.
Please visit web site www.hotels.ucla.edu.
·
The Tiverton House, is located across
from the UCLA Hospital at 900 Tiverton Avenue, Westwood
Village. Reservations can be made by calling (310) 794-0151
for rooms starting as low as $105.00. Guests are not
required to pay hotel taxes of 14%, and parking is free.
·
The DoubleTree Hotel in Westwood will
extend the special UCLA rate to guests coming into town
for the Adey Memorial. The special rate is $99 + 14%
tax, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The rate Monday-Thursday
is $129 + 14% tax. Please visit www.doubletreelawestwood.com
or call Laura Ensey, reservationist, directly at (310)
500- 4300; or send an e-mail to lensey@doubletreelawestwood.com;
be sure to mention the special UCLA rate.
·
The Hilgard House is located at 927 Hilgard Avenue
close to campus. UCLA special rates are as follows:
For one person in a room the rate is $124; two people
is $129 and the maximum of three people is $134. 14%
tax is applicable. For reservations call (310) 208-3945,
be sure to mention UCLA special rates. Please visit
www.hilgardhouse.com.
Parking
Visitor
parking at UCLA can be obtained by stopping at any of
the 11 Parking & Information booths conveniently
located around the campus. The current daily parking
rate is $7 per vehicle and parking meters are available
for shorter visits at $.25 for 8 min. (meters only accept
quarters). Our attendants will issue you a parking permit,
direct you to an area where you may park, and answer
any questions you may have.
Parking Structure 9 (Red Star on map) is the closest
to the BRI Gonda Building (Green Star on map). Just
stop by the parking kiosk off of Westwood Blvd. and
purchase a daily parking permit ($7).
Directions
to UCLA
