American neuroscientists

Neal Elgar Miller (August 3, 1909 – March 23, 2002) was an American experimental psychologist. Described as an energetic man with a variety of interests, including physics, biology and writing, Miller entered the field of psychology to pursue these. With a background training in the sciences, he was inspired by professors and leading psychologists at the time to work on various areas in behavioral psychology and physiological psychology, specifically, relating visceral responses to behavior.
Miller's career in psychology started with research on "fear as a learned drive and its role in conflict". Work in behavioral medicine led him to his most notable work on biofeedback. Over his lifetime he lectured at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Cornell University Medical College and was one of the youngest members of Yale's Institute of Human Relations. His accomplishments led to the establishment of two awards: the New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and an award for distinguished lectureship from the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the eighth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Donald Arthur Glaser (September 21, 1926 – February 28, 2013) was an American physicist, neurobiologist, and the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics.

George K. Aghajanian (April 14, 1932 – July 4, 2023) was an American psychiatrist who was Emeritus Foundations Fund Professor at the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, in the Department of Psychiatry. He was a pioneer in the area of neuropharmacology. He also served as a member of the NARSAD Scientific Advisory Board.

Wilfrid Rall (August 29, 1922 - April 1, 2018) was a neuroscientist who spent most of his career at the National Institutes of Health. He is considered one of the founders of computational neuroscience, and was a pioneer in establishing the integrative functions of neuronal dendrites. Rall developed the use of cable theory in neuroscience, as well as passive and active compartmental modeling of the neuron.
Rall studied physics at Yale University, from which he graduated with highest honors in 1943, and where he was Chairman of the Yale Political Union's Labor Party. He was involved with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago during the war, and subsequently worked with K.S. Cole at Woods Hole. He then moved to the University of Otago in Dunedin to work with John Carew Eccles for his PhD, and remained there after Eccles' departure for Australia. In 1954, he spent a sabbatical year at University College London in the Biophysics Department headed by Bernard Katz, and after a final year in Dunedin (where he was Acting Head of Department) he then moved to Bethesda, Maryland and the National Institutes of Health, where he remained until his retirement in 1994.

Gordon Murray Shepherd (21 July 1933 – 9 June 2022) was an American neuroscientist who carried out basic experimental and computational research on how neurons are organized into microcircuits to carry out the functional operations of the nervous system. Using the olfactory system as a model that spans multiple levels of space, time and disciplines, his studies ranged from molecular to behavioral, recognized by an annual lecture at Yale University on "integrative neuroscience". At the time of his death, he was professor of neuroscience emeritus at the Yale School of Medicine. He graduated from Iowa State University with a BA, Harvard Medical School with an MD, and the University of Oxford with a DPhill.

Marian Cleeves Diamond (November 11, 1926 – July 25, 2017) was an American scientist and educator who is considered one of the founders of modern neuroscience. She and her team were the first to publish evidence that the brain can change with experience and improve with enrichment, what is now called neuroplasticity. Her research on the brain of Albert Einstein helped fuel the ongoing scientific revolution in understanding the roles of glial cells in the brain. She was a professor of anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Other published research explored differences between the cerebral cortex of male and female rats, the link between positive thinking and immune health, and the role of women in science.Her YouTube Integrative Biology lectures were the second most popular college course in the world in 2010.

Paul Donald MacLean (May 1, 1913 – December 26, 2007) was an American physician and neuroscientist who made significant contributions in the fields of physiology, psychiatry, and brain research through his work at Yale Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health. MacLean's evolutionary triune brain theory proposed that the human brain was in reality three brains in one: the reptilian complex, the limbic system, and the neocortex.