An introduction to the work of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel

It is with enormous pleasure that I add my voice to that of others of my generation in celebrating the semicentenary of the 1959 publication of Hubel and Wiesel's first paper in The Journal of Physiology entitled: ‘Receptive fields of single neurons in the cat's striate cortex’ (Hubel & Wiesel, 1959). This paper set the stage for the continuous flow of outstanding papers that emerged over the next twenty-odd years from the Hubel and Wiesel collaboration. Their work and that of Vernon Mountcastle opened up the modern study of the cerebral cortex. As a result of their extraordinary accomplishments, Hubel and Wiesel received the Gross Horwitz Prize together with Vernon Mountcastle in 1975, and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981 together with Roger Sperry. It was on the occasion of the Gross Horwitz Prize, on whose committee I served, that I was invited to introduce Mountcastle, Hubel and Wiesel. My initial comments in that introduction were in fact directed toward an excellent scientist, a member of our Prize committee, who commented during our deliberations that Mountcastle, Hubel and Wiesel seemed to represent superb science, but their work had limited biological generality. To which I replied: ‘You are right, it does not apply to the kidney or the spleen. It is much more restricted. It only helps to explain the workings of the mind.’ Hubel and Wiesel's names are enshrined together in the Pantheon of Creative Collaborations in Biological Sciences, much like Hodgkin and Huxley, Watson and Crick, and Brown and Goldstein. In each case, equal partners joined forces bringing unique skills to their collaboration to produce a new level of science and a new family of insights. I first met Torsten and David in 1957, and we became friends in the period 1960–1965 when I overlapped with them at the Harvard Medical School. That friendship continues to this day, as does my admiration for the work, scientific and administrative, that they have accomplished since going their own directions in the early 1980s. In 1983 Torsten moved to New York, first as Professor and then in 1999 as President of Rockefeller University. I served on the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller during much of Torsten's tenure and this provided me with the additional opportunity to toast his 80th birthday. What follows in the ensuing set of papers in this issue is an outpouring of affection, respect, and gratitude for Torsten and David, for who they are, for what they have given us, and for setting the tone of our science for my generation in the United States.