2000 Education Award in Neuroscience

Dr. Neal Miller

On 4 November 2000, the millennial ANDP Award in Neuroscience Education was presented to Neal E. Miller.

Professor Miller was born in Milwaukee in 1909.  He received a B.S. degree from the University of Washington (1931), an M.S. from Stanford University (1932), and a Ph.D. degree in Psychology from Yale University (1935).  He was a social science research fellow at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Vienna for one year (1935-36) before returning to Yale as a faculty member in 1936.  He spent 30 years at Yale University (1936-1966), where he became the James Rowland Angell Professor of Psychology, and 15 more years at Rockefeller University (1966-1981) before becoming Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller (1981-) and Research Affiliate at Yale (1985- ).

Professor Miller has been a celebrated scientific investigator for decades; he is certainly among the most accomplished behavioral neuroscientists of the 20th century.  He has been acclaimed for his pioneering studies of motivation, learning and reward, and also for his monumental contributions to the study of learned changes in visceral responding and the application of biofeedback to behavioral medicine.  He was elected a member of the National Academy of Science in 1958 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961.  Throughout his career his scientific achievements have been recognized in numerous prestigious awards, most notably the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor given in the U.S. which he received from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  His achievements also were recognized in many other ways by his peers, who showed their appreciation of his wisdom and leadership skills by selecting him as a member of  the Board of Scientific Counselors at three separate institutes of the NIH, by selecting him to chair the NAS/NRC committee on brain sciences that led to the formation of the Society for Neuroscience, and by electing him President of the American Psychological Association (1960-61) and of the Society for Neuroscience (1971-72).

In his 45 years at Yale and Rockefeller Universities, Professor Miller inspired ~150 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate students who worked with him in his lab.  Among his extended scientific family are three members of the National Academy of Science: Gordon Bower, a former graduate student; Bruce McEwen, a former postdoctoral fellow who was president of the ANDP and of the Society for Neuroscience; and Leslie Ungerlieder, a former student of a former student (Ted Coons).