Kinji Imanishi and 60 years of Japanese primatology

in William Kristan’s group at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated the feasibility of examining ‘behavioral indeterminacy’, analogous to what passes for ‘choice’ or ‘free will’ in human behavior, in terms of variations in the activity of individual neurons in the leech, a remarkable confluence of Gunther’s passions for neurobiology and for philosophy of the mind. During this period, Gunther also published what was to become one of his most cited and influential scientific papers, proposing a physiological basis for Hebb’s postulate of synaptic plasticity during learning (1973). This work generated excitement and discussion among neurobiologists in much the same way that Schrödinger’s book had stimulated molecularbiologists-to-be three decades earlier. Arguably, then, Stent’s most important scientific contributions stem from his work in neurobiology. After considerable arm-twisting by his Dean at Berkeley, who threatened to appoint an out-of-department ‘enemy’ if Gunther declined, he served with distinction, and an iron hand, as Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology and later as the first Chairman of the present Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. During this period his research interests shifted for the last time, to developmental biology. He thus founded a new group, which established the leech as an organism for studies in evolutionary development and demonstrated the utility of microinjected cell lineage tracers for the analysis of complex embryos. At Berkeley, life with Gunther revolved around heated discussions of experimental results and the theoretical models to which they gave rise (or vice versa), fine points of grammar, the paradoxes underlying anything worth considering and lunches at the Dynasty Chinese restaurant, punctuated by occasional trips across the Bay Bridge in his white 1963 Cadillac convertible with red leather upholstery, the top down, the road clear, and the sun shining. As Gunther would have said, in his best Chicago gangsterese, “Ya shoulda been there”.