A reductionist approach to understanding the nervous system: the Harold Atwood legacy

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Acknowledgements

JSD: I would like to thank Prof. Harold Atwood for the privilege of working in his lab and the honor of being his last graduate student. In addition to being a great scientist, he is also an excellent and caring mentor. He always wanted to see his students do well and did everything he could to help them succeed. Even after finishing my PhD, he has continued to help me by critiquing my manuscripts, helping with job applications for faculty positions and more recently reading my grants. I was very fortunate to have him as a supervisor and I feel like he had a profound effect on my career.

MBS: It is an honor and privilege to call Harold Atwood my friend. I remember the first time that I saw him in the 1970s walking along the halls of University of Toronto’s Ramsey Wright Zoological Laboratories in his white lab coat. The students who pointed him out to me were amazed that he was a professor because he looked like he was 16 years old. I was 18 years old at the time. Then in 1981 during the last year of my PhD I remember hearing that Dr. Atwood was leaving our department to become the Chair of the Department of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. I learned that he was a much admired Chair. Ten or more years later I was a professor at York University in Toronto and I remember picking up the phone and Harold was on the line. I knew him by reputation (of course) but this was the first time that I had ever spoken with him. He told me about his sabbatical with Chun-Fang Wu and his excitement about the Drosophila nmj. With humour in his voice, he told me that he had been asking scientists, “who might know about larval behaviour”? “Sure enough (he said) all roads led to me, which was quite convenient because I was literally down the road.” Our first meeting was full of talk about Drosophila larvae and mostly I was talking and Harold was smiling and nodding. I remember phoning Ian Meinertzhagen and describing Harold and my first meeting. I asked Ian whether he thought that I had talked too much. I heard Ian laugh heartily and ask “have you met his delightful wife Lenore?”. Harold and I soon became good friends and I stopped worrying about filling the silences. I did a sabbatical in his lab in the late 1990’s at which time he encouraged me to return to the University of Toronto, a decision I have never regretted. I have learned many things from Harold: how to write a research grant without qualifying every statement (“Marla you don’t need that information”), how to think like a neuroscientist, and finally, the utmost importance of having a weekly “cake day”. Harold is exceedingly generous, fair, honest, ethical and also very particular about how science needs to be done. In his retirement years he leads the Senior College at the University of Toronto, a vibrant group of retired professors who regularly meet for lectures and discussions. My husband Allen and I meet Harold and Lenore for dinner at a Chinese buffet restaurant (yes you heard that right-Harold who ate a yogurt and apple for lunch every day when his watch alarm went off -prefers to go to an all you can eat buffet!). I am so grateful to have Harold as a friend and colleague. It was a pleasure to edit this volume in his honor with Jeff Dason and Chun-Fang Wu.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.