Annual Lectures and Awards

The Jerzy Rose Award

When Jerzy Rose retired, his faculty colleagues established the Rose Neuroscience Award. The award has been presented annually since 1982 to the UW-Madison graduate student whose thesis research in the neurosciences is deemed most original and significant by members of the committee.

Jerzy Rose was an outstanding scientist.  He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972 in recognition of his numerous and fundamental contributions in both neurophysiology and neuroanatomy.  His early anatomical studies explored the interconnections between the cortex and thalamus. He then became a pioneer in recording from single neurons. He was one of the first to adopt the use of digital computers in acquiring and analyzing electrophysiological data.  Using these techniques, he made fundamental observations about how the mammalian auditory system is organized and how sound is encoded.

Jerzy Rose was recruited to the University of Wisconsin Dept. of Neurophysiology from Johns Hopkins in 1961. He was recruited by Clinton Woolsey, who remained a close collaborator. Jerzy Rose was on the faculty of the Dept. of Neurophysiology from 1961 to 1979. He was among the first to recognize the strength of combining anatomical and physiological approaches; with this interdisciplinary approach he made fundamental observations about how the mammalian auditory system is organized and how sound is encoded. He and his colleagues documented the ability of auditory neurons to encode timing to within tenths of milliseconds with the first lab computers to be used on this campus. His last series of papers were done together with his wife Hanna Sobkowicz and concerned studies of the development of the cochlea in tissue culture. He died in the summer of 1992 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.

The Cranefield Lectureship was established by Dr. Paul F. Cranefield’s estate as a way to honor his contributions to promote and publish studies of the interface between biology, chemistry, and physics, and to encourage communication and scholarship in the sciences.

Dr. Cranefield was a true renaissance man. He made many important contributions to cardiac electrophysiology; among these was the monograph Electrophysiology of the Heart, published with coauthor Brian F. Hoffman in 1960, which for many years was a “citation classic.” In 1988, he and Hoffman received the Medal of the New York Academy of Medicine for their work that ushered in a “new era in cardiac physiology and pharmacology.” Dr. Cranefield was particularly interested in the genesis of cardiac arrythmias, about which he published two more books. For his work on the electrical activity of myocardial cells, he was awarded the Einthoven Medal from the Einthoven Foundation, by Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands, and he also received an NIH MERIT award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

He was a medical historian who wrote extensively on the history of physiology in the 19th century. For many years, Dr. Cranefield found time to travel throughout Southern Africa, and he wrote Science and Empire: East Coast Fever in Rhodesia and the Transvaal, which traced the social, governmental, and economic impact of the disease as well as the path of discovery that led to its identification: intrigued by a central character in that history, he subsequently published a follow up book, entitled Born Wanderer: The Life of Stanley Portal Hyatt. Dr. Cranefield was an avid bibliophile and collector of early scientific books. He was a fellow of the International Academy of the History of Medicine, and of the New York Academy of Medicine, where he served variously as chairman of the Committee on Library, president of the Friends of the Rare Book Room, and as editor of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. He served on the Ad Hoc Committee on Historical Translations of the American Association for the History of Medicine. He was also a member of the American Physiological Society, the Society of General Physiologists, and the American Philosophical Society, and he was a charter member of the Biophysical Society.

Dr. Cranefield was Editor of the Journal of General Physiology for almost 30 yr, from 1966 until 1995. During that time he became the de facto mentor to a generation of scientists through his demands for not just excellence but perfection! Under his stewardship, the Journal became renowned for the thoroughness of the editorial review received by all submitted manuscripts and the corresponding high quality of the papers that its authors were expected to deliver.