Obituary: Dr. Robert B. Barlow 1939–2009

A star in the vision community was lost with the untimely death of our good friend and colleague, Robert Barlow. Bob succumbed on December 24th, at age 70, after a short bout with acute leukemia. Our sincere condolences are extended to his wife Pat, their three children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, as well as to his brother James and sister Margaret. Bob’s rise to preeminence is not surprising considering his superb training, his grasp of experimental techniques, and his breadth of knowledge in all matters. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, Bob earned his doctorate from the Rockefeller University in 1967 under the tutelage of H. Keffer Hartline, and like his mentor, spent much of his research career examining the features of the visual system of the horseshoe crab. Using an array of electrophysiological, photographic, and behavioral techniques to monitor the activity of Limulus, Bob constructed a cell-based model of the animal’s nervous activity that enabled him to decipher the selective information the eye transmits to the brain. This work shed important insights on the role of efferent nerve fibers in modulating the activity of Limulus photoreceptors, and enabled him to discover neural mechanisms applicable to nervous systems throughout the vertebrate kingdom. In the course of these studies, he and his co-workers discovered the modulatory effects of dopamine on the activity of the circadian clock, the molecular origins of thermal noise that set the limits of photoreceptor sensitivity and the innervation patterns of single optic nerve fibers in the Limulus brain. When Bob began his independent research career, many thought that Limulus had little more to tell us about neural mechanisms. Bob demonstrated beautifully and dramatically that this was completely wrong.