After winning a Nobel Prize in 1972, physics professor shifted gears and and now is among the leading thinkers in brain science
Over the past three decades, Nobel Laureate Leon Cooper has helped shape the interdisciplinary way the University researches the most difficult questions about how we think, learn and remember.
"This is realizing a dream of his," said John P. Donoghue, executive director
of the Brain Science Program. "He had the vision to see it was something worth
pressing the University for, and the skills to convince the University that it
was something worth pressing for."
But Cooper says his work is unfinished.
The program is unrivaled in its depth of talent among more than 70 faculty from
10 disciplines who examine the brain from the molecular to the behavioral and
cognitive level, according to Cooper. However, the world is not yet fully aware
of it.
"One reason for the Brain Science Program was to bring together our resources
in this area to make visible to the outside world how much strength we have in
this area," said Cooper, professor of physics and neuroscience and director of
the Brain Science Program. "We are deep into this effort, and I want to make
the world aware of that.
"I feel committed to completing this."
If Brown is not yet widely known in this area, Cooper is certainly known in
his.
Early in his career Cooper accomplished a feat most academics never attain,
winning the Nobel Prize in 1972, along with two other physicists, for
constructing the theory of superconductivity. The work had been completed 15
years before, and a year before he joined the Brown faculty.
By the time he received the phone call with the news, Cooper had already
shifted interests to the brain. As a theoretical physicist, once the problem
had been solved it was no longer his, he said.
And he always had very broad scientific interests, according to Robert
Schrieffer, who shared the Nobel with Cooper.
Cooper began the Center for Neural Studies in the early 1970s to pull together
a group of faculty studying animal nervous systems and the human brain. Over
the years, the center expanded, adding postdoctoral fellows and graduate
students.
"One of the wonderful things about Brown is the willingness to work together,"
Cooper said. "This problem just naturally crosses disciplines."
Until 1992, the center was responsible for the academic program in neural
science for undergraduate students as well as the interdisciplinary research
program in the study of mind and brain. But in July of that year, a full-scale
academic department of neuroscience was established to accommodate the growing
undergraduate concentration and doctoral program.
The center was replaced by the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, formed
to compliment the newly-created neuroscience department by participating in the
graduate program and providing the opportunity for graduate training.
Mark Bear, professor of neuroscience, is among the group of 20 scientists and
graduate students from various disciplines that form the Institute for Brain
and Neural Systems, which now exists as part of the Brain Science Program.
"I got my Ph.D. here and was well aware of what was going on in his lab," said
Bear. "Leon offered me the opportunity to come back ... he had these ideas
about how things work that were amazingly successful."
"His lab is vibrant and he is as involved as ever," he added.
A $2.3-million grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund was the catalyst for the
creation of the Brain Science Program, and Cooper and others saw a narrow
window of opportunity to do so last year if Brown was to become one of the
nation's leaders in this field.
Other institutions were considering the same step, they said. Only a few months
later, those predictions were realized when MIT announced a historic
$350-million gift to begin a program for brain research.
Brown's Brain Science Program will need continued resources to thrive, said
Donoghue. Funds are necessary both to hire new faculty and to purchase major
research tools. Along those lines, Brown recently received a $1-million award
from the Keck Foundation to purchase a two-photon microscope to view brain
activity in a way not currently possible.
With continued funding, said Bear, "there is no reason why we can't eclipse MIT
in this area. We have proven here that people from different disciplines can
fruitfully work together."
In addition to financial support, however, Brown needs to get past the "Little
Rhody" syndrome - the idea that everything is little in this state, Cooper
said.
"I want finally - at least in one area - to get over the Little Rhody
syndrome," said Cooper. "Not only should we do it, we can do it. I feel
passionately that we can do this because we are so strong scientifically."
No university can be "world-class" in every discipline, but Brown could attain
that status in four or five areas of graduate study, including brain science,
he added.
At a March 3 symposium in honor of Cooper's 70th birthday, the physicist was
lauded by colleagues past and present. The party celebrated a lifetime of
achievement.
"It was nice to be reminded of things you've done," Cooper said later. "But I'm
always thinking about what I still want to do. ...I can't see myself as ever
stopping work. What would I do? My best toy is what's in my head."