Lashley, Karl Spencer (1890–1958)

Karl Lashley was the most important and influential American Scientist in the first half of the twentieth century in the development of modern biological psychology. He was born in Davis, West Virginia on 7 June 1890 and died in Poitiers, France on 7 August 1958. He obtained his PhD at Johns Hopkins with H.S. Jennings and also worked with Adolf Meyer and John B. Watson. Lashley developed the lesion-behavioral methodology to analyze brain substrates of learning and memory, and revolutionized the field. His analysis of the problem of serial order in behavior was a precursor of modern cognitive neuroscience. His critical analysis of all extant theories of brain, learning, and behavior, including his own, was so compelling that none of these theories survived. On the other hand, he contributed an extremely important empirical literature on the role of the visual cortex in visual discriminations, on recovery of function following brain injury, on the organization of thalamocortical projection systems, and on cortical cytoarchitectonics. 'Eminent psychologist with no earned degree in psychology, famous theorist who specialized in disproving theories, including his own, inspiring teacher who described all teaching as useless'.