History

Linda Richards, PhD

Chair, 2021-present

Dr. is a global expert in the development of the brain, and in particular the connection between the two hemispheres, called the corpus callosum. Her lab has made major discoveries on the mechanisms governing the development of the corpus callosum and generated insight into disorders involving dysgenesis of the corpus callosum.

Before joining WashU, she was the Deputy Director (Research) at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia. She is an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAAS), and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS).

Azad Bonni, MD, PhD

Chair, 2012-2019

Dr. Bonni is currently Senior Vice President at Roche where he is Global Head of Neuroscience & Rare Diseases at Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED). As Chair of the Department of Neuroscience, he oversaw tremendous growth and led the renaming of the Department from Anatomy and Neurobiology to Neuroscience. His laboratory studies the mechanisms governing neuronal connectivity during brain development and plasticity, providing fundamental insights into both healthy brain function and dysfunction in disease.

Dr. Bonni is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

David Van Essen, PhD

Chair, 1992-2012

Dr. Van Essen is the Alumni Endowed Professor of Neuroscience at WashU. He pioneered the analysis of cortical structure, function, connectivity, development, and evolution in humans and nonhuman primates. Dr. Van Essen has served as a Principal Investigator for the Human Connectome Project (HCP), a large-scale effort to acquire, analyze, and freely share high-quality neuroimaging data from 1200 healthy adults, in order to enable exploration of brain connectivity and its relationship to behavior. 

Dr. Van Essen was President of the Society for Neuroscience and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroscience, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gerald Fischbach, MD

Chair, 1981-1990

Dr. Fischbach is a Distinguished Scientist and Fellow at the Simons Foundation. He has served as dean of the faculty of health sciences at Columbia University, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Fischbach is a past president of the Society for Neuroscience and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

W. Maxwell Cowan, MD, DPhil

Chair, 1968-1980

Dr. Cowan was a pioneer of developmental neuroscience. He discovered the pruning of axons and culling of neurons that occurs as a part of healthy brain development. He also developed widely adopted techniques, including methods to map axonal connections and culture hippocampal cells.

Dr. Cowan was later provost and executive vice chancellor of Washington University and then vice president and chief scientific officer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). He was president of the Society for Neuroscience and the founding editor of both the Journal of Neuroscience and the Annual Review of Neuroscience.

Edward W. Dempsey, PhD

Chair, 1950-1966

Dr. Dempsey was an early leader in the field of neuroscience, describing the electrophysiology of the forebrain. He later turned to explore metabolic function in the thyroid, uterus and placenta and expanded the applications of transmission electron microscopy.

Dr. Dempsey was Dean of the School of Medicine at Washington University from 1958-1964. He contributed his health expertise in numerous advisory roles to the US government.

Ed Cowdry, PhD

Chair, 1940-1950

Dr. Cowdry discovered parasitic diseases affecting humans and animals, including cause of heartwater disease in cattle, sheep, and goats named Cowdria ruminantium. He helped usher in the use of electron microscopes at the medical school and his research later focused on efforts to detect and treat skin cancers. He is credited as having had an influential role in the development of the field of gerontology.

He was editor of the textbook General Cytology, published in 1924, Special Cytology, published in 1928, and Problems of Ageing, published in 1939.

Robert Terry, MD

Chair, 1900-1941

Dr. Terry initiated and assembled one of the largest skeletal research collections in the United States. In 1964, the collection was indefinitely loaned to the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, where it still resides today.

Dr. Terry was well known among scientists in his field for the reforms he introduced in the teaching of human anatomy.