AJMONE-MARSAN 155For these relatively young and also for well-established investigators,
the greatest advantage of working at the NIH in those early years was
the unquestionably high level of the professional scientific surroundings.
To a neurophysiologist in particular, the caliber of such specialists, not
only at the NINDB but at the NIMH and other institutes, was exceptional.
Any researcher needing help had simply to walk a few floors up or down,
or just across the corridor from his or her laboratory to find illustrious
world authorities like Ichiji Tasaki, Kenneth Cole, Michelangelo Fuortes,
Seymour S. Kety, Louis Sokoloff, Wade H. Marshall, Eric Kandel, Karl
Frank, Walter H. Freygang, Jr., José del Castillo, Robert B. Livingston,
Robert Galambos, Edward V. Evarts, Mortimer Mishkin, Patricia Goldman
(later Goldman-Rakic) and Allan F. Mirsky, available and willing to pro
vide advice, guidance, or criticism. Furthermore, the NIH is located at
walking distance from the National Naval Medical Research Center and
a short drive away from the Walter Reed Medical Center, Georgetown
University, and the Johns Hopkins University, the latter also, at that time,
a true mecca for neurophysiologists.^6
Returning to more specific information about investigators closely
related to the scientific activities of my branch, Baldwin, in the course
of his residency at the MNI, had become one of the preferred pupils
and a protégé of Wilder Penfield, pioneer in the surgical treatment of
seizure disorders and director of the MNI. Baldwin himself had the
greatest admiration for his teacher and made no secret that he aimed to
emulate him–albeit it with uneven success–in many endeavors. These
included Baldwin’s major interest in temporal lobe epilepsy and its
surgical treatment, as well as the strict discipline he required of his staff,
technicians, and clinical associates, and his highly structured approach
to research plans. The fact that he was also a dedicated Marine in the in
active reserve, with exhaustive physical training every weekend, must
have contributed to his quasi-militaristic attitude to clinical investigation.
In any case, Baldwin transferred a very similar organizational approach
to the field of surgical management of epilepsy from the MNI to the
NIH. This approach emphasized a detailed analysis of epileptic seiz
ures, mostly through a careful history and/or a detailed description by
patients, their family, and hospital staff,^7 and a close collaboration with