The Form Within

Karl H. Pribram was once dubbed "The Magellan of the Mind" for his breakthrough research on the functions of the forebrain, including the frontal lobes, temporal lobes, and limbic system, and their roles in decision making and emotion. His holonomic theory of memory and perception has been the subject of numerous popular books, including Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe, and Lynne McTaggart's The Field, among many others. Born in Vienna in 1919, Pribram received his medical degree from the University of Chicago at the age of twenty three, becoming one of the first three hundred certified brain surgeons in the world. During his next decade as a neurosurgeon in Memphis and Jacksonville, he joined Karl Lashley at the Yerkes Primate Center, became its director, and pioneered the field of neuropsychology--a term that Pribram invented. He spent the following sixty years leading groundbreaking research into the interrelations of the brain, behavior, and the mind: ten years at Yale University, thirty years at Stanford University, and twenty years as distinguished professor at Radford and George Mason Universities and (simultaneously) as distinguished professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Georgetown University, where he still serves today. Pribram is the author of more than 700 books and scientific publications, including Plans and the Structure of Behavior (with George Miller and Eugene Galanter, 1960), which is credited with launching the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology; Languages of the Brain (1971); Freud's "Project" Re-assessed(with Merton Gill, 1976); and Brain and Perception (1989). He is the recipient of more than sixty major awards and honors, including a lifetime grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research; a Lifetime Research Career Award from the National Institute of Health; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychology and from the Washington Academy of Sciences; honorary doctorates in psychology and neuroscience from the Universities of Montreal and Bremen, Germany; and an Outstanding Contributions Award from the American Board of Medical Psychotherapists. He was the first recipient of the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Award for uniting the sciences and the humanities.