A fan of jazz and one of the founders of UCLA’s Brain
Research Institute, Donald Lindsley was a compassionate
teacher.
He kept in touch with students by writing full-page letters they
would receive years after earning their degrees.
Colleagues, friends and family will remember Lindsley this
afternoon at the UCLA Faculty Center, where they will share their
memories of Lindsley and view an archival exhibit of him prepared
by Librarian Russell Johnson.
Lindsley, who came to UCLA in 1951, died of natural causes June
19 at the age of 95.
He was a pioneer in the use of electroencephalography, also
known as EEG, to record electrical brain activity.
Among other contributions to the field of brain research,
Lindsley and his partner Horace Magoun published papers in 1949 and
1950 detailing activating systems in the brain that support
wakefulness and arousal. Lindsley’s research also addressed
the relationship between brain mechanisms, emotion and
attention.
Neurology Professor Charles Wilson said Lindsley, a member of
the National Academy of Sciences, was known for working through the
night. Wilson remembers collaborating with him on experimental
studies of the brain that sometimes lasted late into the
evening.
“After midnight, he would go to his office, and he would
write until dawn. Then he’d go home and shower, and then
he’d go back and teach,” Wilson said.
Lindsley’s son, David, said his father “used to do
some of his best writing” late at night, and his
father’s dedication to scientific research was matched by his
commitment to students.
“He was a member of the old school, which meant that he
worked day and night on his research, but he was always willing to
see students who had questions about psychology,” he
said.
Wilson, who worked under Lindsley as a postdoctoral student in
1972, said Lindsley spent a lot of time with each of his students,
assisting them in their job searches.
“If you needed help, he was always there,” he
said.
Lindsley kept in close contact with students by writing
individual letters to them, even after they had left the
university.
“If you were one of his students, you’d get letters
in the mail that he’d typed himself ““ single-spaced,
full-page letters ““ even later in life,” Wilson
said.
Apart from his role as researcher and teacher, Lindsley was a
trumpeter and a fan of UCLA football and basketball, David
said.
He added that, while his father was in graduate school, Lindsley
played the trumpet in a small music group. He played the cornet in
a jazz band he formed called The Four Acres, with whom he traveled
with through much of England and France.
Wilson said that, though Lindsley was proud of his scientific
work, he was humble with the people he met.
“He was equally friendly with the president of the
university and with the janitor who was taking away wastebaskets in
his lab,” Wilson said. “He didn’t have any
preconceptions about people.”
Lindsley is survived by his children, David, Margaret and Robert
Lindsley and Sara Ellen Lyons. Ellen Ford Lindsley, his wife of 69
years, died in 2002.
For information about this afternoon’s memorial, call
the Brain Research Institute at (310) 825-1868.