Harvard dream expert  Dr. J. Allan Hobson                  First Center Director Al Kaszniak with grad student Logan Trujillo

                        The one and only David Chalmers                                 Panel at New Orleans Neuroscience event:

                                                                                                                     Rodolfo Llinas, Petra Stoerig, Mortimer Mishkin

                  Stuart Hameroff and Kunio Yasue                                        The late Francis Crick and Christof Koch

               Dave Chalmers and Sir Roger Penrose                                                           Francis Crick

BACK IN THE DAVE

DAVID CHALMERS on Consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0M1fLbFp_w#t=16

ALWYN SCOTT

Co-Founder CCS

Alwyn C. Scott  1931-2006

Pioneer and champion of nonlinear science

Alwyn C. Scott, an emeritus mathematics professor at the University of Arizona, who helped pioneer the understanding of nonlinear waves,  emergent mental patterns and human consciousness, died Jan. 11 of lung  cancer. He was 75.

Starting at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960s, and  working in laboratories around the world, Professor Scott made important  discoveries in nonlinear science, an emerging field that seeks to understand  systems in which the whole is greater or less than the sum of the parts. In  particular his work pioneered the application of nonlinear methods to biological molecules like proteins and DNA.

Professor Scott authored six books and edited many others,  including the recently

published Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, the first  volume tocombine wide-ranging research in all of the many fields where  nonlinear science is being applied.

In 1980, Professor Scott was a Founding Editor of Elsevier’s Nonlinear Phenomena, the first scientific journal devoted exclusively to this  new area. In 1981, he was selected as the Founding Director of the  Center for Nonlinear Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Both the  journal and the center were soon copied by other groups around the world.

His research, which stemmed from a boyhood interest in water waves  and Ham radio, led him eventually to study the ways impulses move on  nerves, how the brain works and how the firing of synapses may give rise to  consciousness.

As a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of  Technology in his 20s, Professor Scott began to explore the behavior of nerve  impulses and shock waves. He derived mathematical equations to describe and  predict the behavior of such systems that became widely used.  He was awarded  numerous patents and published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles. Despite  the complexity of his work, he often used the example of a simple  candle flame to explain how nonlinear equations and methods might be useful in  answering questions in many fields.

He frequently described nonlinear science as a “metascience” that  can inform other branches of inquiry by allowing researchers to recognize and  make calculations about chaotic systems and those in which new  structures emerge.

“He’s one of the pioneers in nonlinear science,” said David  McLaughlin, provost of New York University and a colleague who wrote a seminal  paper with Scott in 1978.

“Most scientists work on one thing in great depth,” he added. “Al  worked on a great many things but with depth at the same time -- from low- temperature devices in electrical engineering, to nerve axons, to protein  dynamics to the dangers of high-voltage electric wires, to consciousness.”

His work in nonlinear waves showed an unusual breadth of vision,  ranging from experiments and the theory of nerve pulses, to energy- conserving waves (solitons) in electronic devices and macro-molecules. These various  types of waves conceptually play the role of "elementary particles" in a  range of physical and biological phenomena.

“In a way, a nerve impulse can be viewed as an elementary particle of thought, just as an electron is viewed as an elementary particle of  matter,” Scott said shortly before he died.

Alwyn Charles Scott was born in Worcester, Mass., on Dec. 25, 1931, coincidentally the date of the first live radio broadcast of  the  New York Metropolitan Opera, a series in which he later took a lifelong  interest. He grew up in Westborough, a town outside Boston, and entered MIT as an undergraduate at age 16. He is survived by his wife of 24 years  (May 1982), Lynne MacNeil; their daughter, Lela Scott MacNeil, of New York  City; two sons, Emmon Scott of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and Alwyn Charles  Scott Jr. of Seattle, Wash.; and four grandchildren. His previous marriage, to  Pauline Feduchka, ended in divorce.

Mr. Scott graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology  in 1952 with a degree in physics, and then worked for a variety of  institutions, including the physics research laboratory of Sylvania Electric, the  U.S. Dept. of Defense and Bell Laboratories. He received a doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT in 1961.

His early work set the direction for a career that revealed the  prevalence of nonlinear phenomena in many physical and biological systems. In  1965-66, at the Institute of Applied Physics of the University of Bern,  Switzerland, he discovered that the dynamics of magnetic flux propagation on  Josephson (superconducting) transmission lines (JTLs) are described by the  sine-Gordon
equation. This discovery deeply influenced his research and laid the groundwork for advances in nonlinear science.

He spent much of the 1970s at the Laboratorio di Cibernetica near  Naples, Italy, studying the SG equation and fabricating long Josephson  junctions. In 1978 he cowrote, with McLaughlin, a widely cited paper on the  application of
soliton theory to analyze magnetic flux dynamics on long JTLs,  which are modeled by a perturbed SG equation. During the 1979-80 academic  year, with support from a European Molecular Biology Organization Fellowship,  he worked
at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, studying the interactions of  nerve
impulses near branching regions of squid giant axons.

“To me and many other scientists I believe - among them his many  students -
it is one of the miracles in our scientific life that we have met  Alwyn
Scott,” said Peter L. Christiansen, emeritus professor of physics  at the
Technical University of Denmark. “Without what he taught us and  without his
support and encouragement we would not have been what we are.”

Professor Scott was noted for his encompassing mind and a wry sense  of humor
drawn from his sometimes contrarian approach to life.  When  considering an
issue, he often looked humorously to see if the reverse was true, and
enjoyed such games as teasing his family with “opposite day” in  which all
statements were assumed to imply their converse.

“He was always open to ideas, and especially to new ideas,” said Alan
Newell, professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona.

His questioning attitude served him in the 1970s in opposing the  U.S. Navy’s
plans to build a massive underground antenna in Wisconsin. He  testified in
Congress that the system, known as Project Sanguine, not only  wouldn’t work
but would harm plant and animal life in the northern half of the  state.

In 1985, shortly after moving to Tucson, Ariz., Professor Scott was
tragically struck by a truck while riding a bicycle on his way to  campus,
and suffered a broken back that left him paraplegic. He described  this event
in a short memoir entitled “The Butterfly Effect,” which poignantly  explored
the relationship between nonlinearity and everyday life.

Although his mobility was severely restricted, he continued to teach,
lecture at international conferences and conduct research in both  the United
States and Denmark, where he took a permanent joint appointment at the
Technical University in the summer of 1986, working half the year  in each
country.

“He was such a vital person,” said Leon Shohet, a professor at the
University of Wisconsin. “When you talked with him you felt that he
concentrated on every word you said.”

After the accident, he traveled less. “But he was still the same Al  -- still
looking at the depth of understanding that was so needed to advance  fields
of human knowledge,” Shohet said. “This spirit never left him and  those with
whom he came in contact with --and those were often people whom he  never met
in person because of his difficulties with travel. Whenever we  couldn't
understand a concept clearly, I or the students would email Al and the
answer would be forthcoming within 24 hours.

He retired from the University of Arizona in 2000 and from the  Technical
University of Denmark in 2001, and resided permanently in Tucson  since 2003.

He enjoyed playing the recorder, writing poetry and cooking. “I  really liked
to go hiking before I became handicapped,” he said.

Since retirement, he has authored two books, Neuroscience, a  Mathematical
Primer (2002); and Nonlinear Science, Emergence and Dynamics of  Coherent
Structures (2003).

He also edited the 1053-page Encylopedia of Nonlinear Science  (2005), which
contains hundreds of entries covering the whole range of the field.  “Alwyn
nursed this project through several difficult years and a change in
publisher, single-handedly re-writing many entries in his own  natural and
very readable style,” said Chris Eilbeck, professor at Heriot-Watt
University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He was completing a final book, The Nonlinear Universe: Chaos,  Emergence,
Life, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in November 2006. It is
scheduled to be published in the spring of 2007.


By Alwyn Scott, Jr.

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/quantum-consciousness/Content?oid=1066139