Nadel special issue introduction.

Abstract

This festschrift issue of Hippocampus recognizes Lynn Nadel s long career of outstanding theoretical and empirical contributions to the fields of psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science. It follows a symposium in his honor held at the University of Arizona, December 7–8, 2017, attended by many of the authors of the following articles. In this introductory article, we review Professor Nadel s training, the university positions he held, and briefly discuss some of his central contributions. Dr Nadel received his PhD in Physiological Psychology from McGill University in 1967 and conducted postdoctoral research at The Czechoslovak Academy of Science Institute of Physiology in Prague, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Following his post-doctoral fellowship, he held positions at the Medical Research Council s Neural Mechanisms of Behavior Group at University College, London, as a Dozent in Neurophysiology at the University of Bergen, as a faculty member at Dalhousie University, as a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, and as a research scientist at the University of California Irvine. He was appointed Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona in 1985, where he served as Head of the Department of Psychology from 1989 until 2002. During his tenure as Department Head, he played a critical role in building the department into the first-rate research and training unit that it is today. In recognition of his scientific achievements and of his service to the scientific and academic community, Lynn Nadel was appointed a University of Arizona Regents Professor in 2003. Lynn Nadel s discoveries have illuminated the functions of the mammalian hippocampus, a brain system essential to spatial mapping and episodic memory. Beginning with his doctoral work, his science has been ground breaking and durable. His dissertation demonstrated a differentiation of function within the dorsal/ventral extent of the hippocampus of the rat (Nadel, 1968). In fact, the separate role of the anterior/posterior (in primates) or dorsal/ventral (in rodents) components of the hippocampus has generated renewed interest in the current systems and cognitive neuroscience field. He has, for nearly 40 years, advanced our understanding of this brain system in ways that have had an enormous influence on both psychology and neuroscience. He may be best known for the book he wrote with John Received: 25 October 2019 Accepted: 1 November 2019