Karl Spencer Lashley (1890 - 1958)
While working toward his Ph.D. in genetics at Johns Hopkins University, Karl Lashley became associated with the influential psychologist John B. Watson. During three years of postdoctoral work on vertebrate behavior (1914-17), he began formulating the research program that was to occupy the remainder of his life.
In 1920 he became an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where his prolific research on brain function gained him a professorship in 1924. He was later a professor at the University of Chicago (1929-35) and Harvard University (1935-55) and also served as director of the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, Orange Park, Florida. His work included research on brain mechanisms related to sense receptors and on the cortical basis of motor activities. He studied many animals, including primates, but his major work was done on the measurement of behavior before and after specific, carefully quantified, induced brain damage in rats.