Biographical Memoirs Volume 89 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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VINCENT GASTON DETHIER
VINCENT GASTON DETHIER
Pages 76-95
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From page 76... ...
Photograph Courtesy of University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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From page 77... ...
Thanks to his exceptional vitality, Vince paid little heed to advancing years. When he was stricken with his sudden, final illness on September 8, 1993, he was in the classroom inaugurating another course for a group of lucky college students, fully 54 years after the start of his teaching career.
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From page 78... ...
I stood stock-still and slowly lowered my head to see what it was. There with its wings slowly expanding clung a brown butterfly with a red band extending down each wing.
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THE HARVARD YEARS Vince's interest in the natural world survived Harvard's tedious biology courses (rote memorization was de rigueur) and close contact with pickled, rank specimens delivered for dissection.
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This mentoring style suited Vince perfectly in the heady atmosphere of the Harvard biology community of the 1930s. When Vince and his fellow graduate students needed to learn insect physiology and found no courses on the subject, they organized themselves and taught each other.
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From page 81... ...
to make the study of insect chemoreception his lifetime passion. THE WAR YEARS After a brief appointment as a junior faculty member at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, Vince joined the Army Air Corps in the Africa-Middle East theater of operations during World War II.
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From page 82... ...
Stimulating the tarsal taste hairs of a hungry Phormia elicited reflex proboscis extension, which then served as a quantitative index of stimulating effectiveness of a taste solution. By using very large series of sugars, alcohols, acids, and inorganic salts, Vince began to define the molecular requirements for the binding sites on the chemoreceptors providing input to the proboscis extension reflex.
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From page 83... ...
Now he could listen in on the neural responses of the small set of contact chemoreceptor neurons associated with dendrites in the hollow channel of taste hairs. A neuroethologist by instinct, Vince considered at every turn the nature of the stimuli encountered by fly chemoreceptors in the natural world.
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From page 84... ...
THE PHILADELPHIA YEARS Vince moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1958, joining several of his former Hopkins colleagues in the Institute of Neurological Sciences in the School of Medicine. While Vince's primary appointment was in the biology department, the interdepartmental and interdisciplinary assemblage of behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, and physiological psychologists gathered in the Institute of Neurological Sciences was a lively and intense group that provided each participant with widely ranging perspectives and technical approaches.
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From page 85... ...
(While this is still the case, the mammals are advancing.) With postdoctoral associates Louis Schoonhoven from the Netherlands and Tibor Jermy from Hungary, Vince was able at last to carry out a detailed electrophysiological analysis of caterpillar chemoreceptors, as he had long yearned to do.
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From page 86... ...
The molecular dissection of fly learning continues to be a major research topic in neuroscience. Vince also tested the idea that polyphagous caterpillars would be more likely to show food-aversion conditioning than monophagous caterpillars, a suggestion one of us (A.G.)
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From page 87... ...
a modifiable integrative center in the central nervous system that decodes sensory patterns and commands the feeding motor-control center, integrating feedback from previous postingestive consequences associated with responses to a chemosensory code. Vince was at the forefront of the scientific endeavor to unravel food selection behavior in herbivorous insects.
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From page 88... ...
Appealing to his love of clear and elegant exposition, Vince found that teaching was a commitment he couldn't break. To acknowledge his accomplishments on the Commission on Civility and his strong commitment to civility issues generally, the university established posthumously the Vincent Dethier Award for the faculty member who best exemplifies the ideals to which Vince aspired.
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From page 89... ...
Prout died one night in a violent storm; without him, the road gradually disappeared, and with it went the primrose and the moths. At the burial the parson pondered the meaning of the old
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From page 90... ...
; membership in the Explorers Club; and fellowship in the Royal Entomological Society of London. In 1993 he received the John Burroughs medal for distinguished nature writing.
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From page 91... ...
Vincent Gaston Dethier was loved -- and is remembered -- for his passion for nature, his elegant science, his deep desire to understand, and his dedication to lucid and esthetic communication of that understanding; for his friendly manner, keen wit, lively sense of humor, and love of family; and for his humanity. In her contribution to the Festschrift honoring Dethier on his seventieth birthday, Miriam Rothschild gave voice to these feelings in her own perfect and inimitable way.
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From page 92... ...
1955. Physiology of a primary chemoreceptor unit.
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From page 93... ...
The structure of the tarsal chemoreceptors of the blowfly, Phormia regina Meigen.
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From page 94... ...
Behavioral aspects of protein ingestion by the blowfly, Phormia regina Meigen.
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From page 95... ...
USA 62:136-143. 1973 Electrophysiological studies of gustation in lepidopterous larvae II.
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