Arthur M. Sackler, M.D.
1913–1987
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Arthur M.Sackler was edu cated in the arts, sciences, and humanities at New York University. These interests remained the focus of his life, as he became widely known as a scientist, art collector, and philanthropist, endowing institutions of learning and culture throughout the world.
He felt that his fundamental role was as a doctor, a vocation he decided upon at the age of four. After completing his internship and service as house physician at Lincoln Hospital in New York City, he became a resident in psychiatry at Creedmoor State Hospital. There, in the 1940s, he started research that resulted in more than 150 papers in neuroendocrinology, psychiatry, and experimental medicine. He considered his scientific research in the metabolic basis of schizophrenia his most significant contribution to science and served as editor of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychobiology from 1950 to 1962. In 1960 he started publication of Medical Tribune, a weekly medical newspaper that reached over one million readers in 20 countries. He established the Laboratories for Therapeutic Research in 1938, a facility in New York for basic research that he directed until 1983.
As a generous benefactor to the causes of medicine and basic science, Arthur Sackler built and contributed to a wide range of scientific institutions: the Sackler School of Medicine established in 1972 at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science at New York University, founded in 1980; the Arthur M.Sackler Science Center dedicated in 1985 at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts; and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, established in 1980, and the Arthur M.Sackler Center for Health Communications, established in 1986, both at Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts.
His pre-eminence in the art world is already legendary. According to his wife Jillian, one of his favorite relaxations was to visit museums and art galleries and pick out great pieces others had overlooked. His interest in art is reflected in his philanthropy; he endowed galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University, a museum at Harvard University, and the Arthur M.Sackler Gallery of Asian Art in Washington, DC. True to his oft-stated determination to create bridges between peoples, he offered to build a teaching museum in China, which Jillian made possible after his death, and in 1993 opened the Arthur M.Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University in Beijing.
In a world that often sees science and art as two separate cultures, Arthur Sackler saw them as inextricably related. In a speech given at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Some reflections on the arts, sciences and humanities, a year before his death, he observed: “Communication is, for me, the primum movens of all culture. In the arts…I find the emotional component most moving. In science, it is the intellectual content. Both are deeply interlinked in the humanities.” The Arthur M.Sackler Colloquia at the National Academy of Sciences pay tribute to this faith in communication as the prime mover of knowledge and culture.
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Contents
Papers from the Inaugural Arthur M.Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences
Arthur M.Sackler COLLOQUIA OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Neural Signaling
February 15-17, 2001
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
Organized by Solomon H.Snyder, M.D., and Richard L.Huganir, Ph.D.
Program
Thursday, February 15
Inaugural Sackler Lecture
Solomon H.Snyder, Johns Hopkins University
Brain Messengers
Friday, February 16
Introductory Remarks
Solomon H.Snyder
Session I. Inter- and Intracellular Signaling in the Nervous System
Chair, Solomon H.Snyder
Pietro DeCamilli, Yale University
Molecular Mechanisms in Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis and Recycling
Richard L Huganir, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University
AMPA Receptors and Synaptic Plasticity
Roger Nicoll, University of California, San Francisco
The Brain's Own Cannabis
Mu-ming Poo, University of California, Berkeley
Retrograde Signaling Associated with LTP/LTD
Session II. Inter- and Intracellular Signaling in the Nervous System (continued)
Chair, Richard L.Huganir
Lily Jan, University of California, San Francisco
Molecular Regulation of Ion Channels
Michael Greenberg, Harvard University
Signal Transduction Pathways that Regulate Nervous System Development and Function
Cori Bargmann, University of California, San Francisco
Olfactory Diversity and Olfactory Behavior: A Novel Lateral Signaling Pathway that Requires Axon Contact and Calcium Signaling
Dennis Selkoe, Harvard University
Presenilin, Notch and the Genesis and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease
Saturday, February 17
Session III. Signaling in the Developing Nervous System
Chair, Cori Bargmann
Richard Axel, Columbia University
Establishing and Maintaining an Olfactory Sensory Map
Marc Tessier-Lavigne, University of California, San Francisco
Signaling in Axon Growth and Guidance
Corey Goodman, University of California, Berkeley
Wiring Up the Brain: Genes, Gradients, and Growth Cones
Carla Shatz, Harvard University
Nature and Nurture in Brain Wiring
Session IV. Drugs and Disease and Signaling in the Nervous System
Chair, Lily Jan
Eric Nestler, Dallas Southwestern Medical School
Molecular Basis of Drug Addiction
Marc Caron, Duke University
Interplay Between Dopamine, Glutamate and Serotonin Systems in Mice Lacking the Dopamine Transporter
Dennis Choi, Washington University
Zinc-Mediated Neural Signaling
Paul Greengard, Rockefeller University
The Neurobiology of Dopamine Signaling