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https://www.big-lies.org| This is a hypertext file from Rae West's archives. It is not his work and is reproduced here, unedited, so readers may judge for themselves the views expressed in this file when it was freely available on Internet. Home page: https://www.big-lies.org |
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In the year 1900, there was a historic event known as the "Boxer Rebellion" in Beijing. The aftermath was yet another humiliation for China when she had to pay huge sums of redemption money to the eight nations sacking the capital for damages done to their properties. However, America returned the money with the condition that the money be used partly to build a university and partly to pay for a scholarship program called "the Boxer Fellowship". The fellowship provides support for some twenty "Boxer Scholars', one in each field of study, who are the winners in a nation-wide competitive examination open to all qualified applicants. The scholarship provides full expense for studying for a higher degree in the US for as long as required. All told five groups of "Boxer Scholars" had been chosen and educated in the United States until the program was halted when the Japanese army invaded China in 1938.
Then suddenly in 1943 it was revived (once and for the last time). I was very lucky for having graduated from the National Central University in Chungking just in time to qualify for participation. Even luckier was I in winning the slot for Biology. My roommate, C.N.Yang won the Physics slot. Later in 1957, Yang and T.D.Lee were conjointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
It was near Christmas time in 1945 when I arrived at the University of Chicago where I began my Ph.D. study in the world-famous Department of Physiology. I received my degree in 1948 and continued as a postdoctoral Seymour Coman fellow for two more years in the same department still under Professor R.W.Gerard, one of the most brilliant cell physiologists I have known.
When my postdoc fellowship ended, I got my first job as (Research) Instructor at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, where I developed the first key concept of what was to be the Association-Induction Hypothesis. Equally important, it was in Baltimore, I met and eventually married my beautiful and talented concert-pianist wife, Shirley Wong. She was soon to graduate from the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
Professor Gerard then left the University of Chicago and founded a large research laboratory at the Neuropsychiatric Institute in the medical school of the University of Illinois, also located in Chicago. He offered me a (Research) Assistant Professorship with no other duty than continuing the research in which I was engaged and I accepted it gratefully. In Chicago I continued my research in cell physiology, rising to Associate Professor in 1957.
Then a group of young scientists headed by Donald Rudin and George Eisenman was asked to develop a Department of Basic Research in the newly founded Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in Philadelphia (EPPI). Soon it had evolved many enticing and exciting opportunities, among which may be mentioned full support for research from funds from the state of Pennsylvania, a full-sized new library right on the same floor, the opportunity to design my own research laboratory. Greatly excited by the prospect, I accepted the job as Senior Research Scientist at EPPI. It was here that I completed the development of the basic concepts of association-induction hypothesis and the writing of my first major book, "A Physical Theory of the Living State".
Unfortunately, the atmosphere suddenly changed in 1959-1960, and I, together with most of the senior research scientists, left EPPI. The department was to last a few more years until it was permanently shut down.
It was then that I had yet another piece of good luck in meeting the world-renown neurologist, Dr. Frank Elliott who was helping to build a new center for neurological and related research in the Nation's first hospital, the Pennsylvania Hospital--- founded by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond. I was offered the opportunity to continue my research beginning with converting what once was a part of a Catholic orphanage into another research laboratory with funds provided by the John A. Hartford Foundation (of the A and P fortune). It was in this independent two-storied building on the corner of 7th and Delancey Street that I resumed my full-time research, lasting for 27 more years. It was 1961, a year to be remembered not only because in that year my first book, "A Physical Theory of the Living State" came in print, but also it was the year in which both my wife and I got our US citizenship. By that time, our two boys Mark and Tim were born. A girl, Eva was to come later. In 1984 my second book, "In Search of the Physical Basis of Life" was published by Plenum Publishing Co,, New York.
Since the forced closing of my laboratory at the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1988, my little group of three, including Margaret Ochsenfeld and Dr. Zen-dong Chen, has been the guests of our friend, Dr. Raymond Damadian and his company, the Fonar Corporation. The remainder you know from the Homepage, including the fact that my third book, " A Revolution in the Physiology of the Living Cell" was published by Krieger Publishing Co., of Malabar, Florida on the fourth year after our arrival on Long Island.
Meanwhile all of our three children got married to wonderful spouses and were on their own. Our oldest son, Mark who graduated from Harvard, obtained his MD and Ph.D. from Duke University. He is now practicing, teaching and doing research at Emory University at Atlanta. My second son, graduated from Cornell and Stanford, is already a Partner in the McKinsey Corporation of business consultants in Los Angeles. Like his mother, he is good at music and is now also serving as Board member of the Philharmonic of Los Angeles. My daughter is a very enterprising physical therapist. Each one of our children has by now at least one child. So my wife and I are now the proud grand-parents of two granddaughters (Sydney and Stephanie ) and two grandsons, (Graham and Hudson ).