Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Lindsley (Donald B.) papers
Biomed.0423
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: Donald B. Lindsley papers
Identifier/Call Number: Biomed.0423
Physical Description:
58.5 Linear Feet
(97 boxes, 4 half document boxes, 4 shoe boxes, 2 flat oversize
boxes, 1 magazine box, 3 LP boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1866-2001
Abstract: Donald B. Lindsley was an early pioneer
of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and an internationally recognized psychologist and brain
scientist. Originally from Ohio, Lindsley worked throughout the United States and spent the
last half of his career at UCLA where he was instrumental in founding UCLA's Brain Research
Institute. Nearly half of this collection is constituted by Lindsley's correspondence
spanning over 70 years. The remainder of the collection consists of reprints, typescripts of
papers and talks, research notes, research and technical data, audiovisual material, and
autobiographical ephemera that date from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the
twenty-first century.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access
special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on
this page.
Language of Material: Finding aid is written in
English.
Language of Material: The materials are chiefly in
English, with some documents in Russian or other languages.
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in
advance using the request button located on this page.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
CONTAINS UNPROCESSED AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: Materials are not currently available for
access and will require further processing and assessment. If you have questions about this
material please email spec-coll@library.ucla.edu.
Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All
other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the
responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the
copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not
hold the copyright.
[Identification of item], Donald B. Lindsley papers (Biomed 423). Louise M. Darling
Biomedical Library History and Special Collections for the Sciences, University of
California, Los Angeles.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Gift of Margaret Lindsley, 2002.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make
them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and
resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level
of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts
more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to
national and local standards and best practices.
Processed by Jason Richard Miller in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT),
with supervision from Kelley Wolfe Bachli, 2009-2010.
The processing of this collection was generously supported by
Arcadia
funds.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
6484296
Donald Benjamin Lindsley was born in 1907 in Brownhelm, Ohio. He attended nearby Wittenberg
College (now University), graduating in 1929 with a major in Psychology under mentor Martin
Luther Reymert. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa under the supervision of Carl
Seashore and Edward Lee Travis. In 1931 Lindsley gained passage to Europe on a
Holland-America Line ship by playing coronet in a University of Iowa based jazz band called,
"The Four Aces." At Iowa he met Ellen Ford, whom he married in 1933. They had four children
and remained married until Ellen's death in 2002.
Lindsley spent 1932-1933 as an instructor at the University of Illinois. In 1933 he was
awarded a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship and spent a year at Harvard
Medical School. In 1934-1935 the fellowship was renewed and Lindsley worked at Massachusetts
General Hospital. During his time in the Boston area he was a colleague of Hallowell Davis,
Walter Cannon, Alexander Forbes and Albert Grass. He also got to know Edwin G. Boring, who
at the time was establishing an independent psychology department at Harvard, and B. F.
Skinner, a member of Henry A. Murray's Psychological Clinic. During this fellowship he
assisted in pioneering work with the electromyogram and was a subject participant in
Harvard's early electroencephalogram (EEG) study.
In 1935 Lindsley received a three-year position as a research associate at Western Reserve
University and the Brush Foundation. Here he collected over one hundred and fifty EEGs and
studied the responses of visual and auditory stimulation, biofeedback, and taught
developmental psychology. A year later Lindsley became an assistant professor of psychology
at Brown University and the Director of Psychology and Neurophysiology at Bradley Hospital.
He spent the years 1942-1945 as the civilian Director of a Radar Operator Research and
Training Program in the Army's southern signal corps school in Florida. In 1946 Lindsley
joined Horace W. (Tid) Magoun at Northwestern University where they researched how the
nervous system mediates behavior and states of consciousness. Here Lindsley chaired a panel
on the psychology and physiology of undersea warfare: an early example of human factors and
human engineering research.
In 1951 Lindsley followed Magoun to UCLA to take up a joint professorship in the
Psychology department and the new UCLA School of Medicinel. Here Lindsley's research focused
on neurophysiology of the visual system and the psychological aspects of vision. Lindsley,
along with Magoun and Charles (Tom) Sawyer, arranged for some research space at the Long
Beach VA Hospital. In 1959 they established the Brain Research Institute joined by Dr. John
D. French and Theodore Bullock. Due to the growing number of visiting scientists and
students the Brain Research Institute came to be housed in an 11-story building in UCLA's
medical complex in 1961. In 1967 Lindsley was a crew member of the Alpha Helix, a Scripps
Institute research vessel, which explored the Amazon. In 1977 Lindsley retired from UCLA at
the age of 70.
Donald Lindsley was one of the first scientists to use the new technique of
electroencephalography (EEG) to research and study electrical brain activity. His
interdisciplinary approach to brain research yielded important contributions in
understanding various aspects of brain behavior. He published seminal papers in 1949-1950
with Horace Magoun, which defined the brainstem activating systems that support wakefulness
and arousal. In addition to pioneering brain research Lindsley was known as an unpretentious
and affable colleague and a nurturing mentor to the many students and researchers who passed
through his labs. He keenly followed his students' careers by carrying on correspondences
with many of them for decades.
Throughout his career Lindsley authored and co-authored over two-hundred and forty
publications, sponsored nearly fifty Ph.D. candidates, and hosted approximately eighty
post-doctoral and visiting scientists. He was an invited speaker at more than fifty
symposia, conferences, and celebrations. He gave over forty invited lectures at various
colleges and universities, including Harvard's prestigious William James Lectures in 1958.
He received honorary doctorates from Brown University in 1958, Wittenberg University in
1959, Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut in 1965, Loyola University in Chicago in
1969, and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany in 1977. Lindsley was elected to
the National Academy of Sciences in 1952, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965,
and gained Foreign Membership in the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 1987. The
Society of Neuroscience has honored Lindsley since 1979 by annually awarding the Donald B.
Lindsley Prize to talented young brain scientists.
Donald B. Lindsley died on July 19, 2003, in Santa Monica, California at the age of
95.
The papers of Donald B. Lindsley span the years 1866-2001. Included are correspondence
(with occasional marginal notes; carbon copies are filed with the letters received, and
significant correspondence are often photocopied); publication reprints; typescripts of
publications, talks and lectures; bibliographical and research notes (mostly relating to the
electroencephalogram); grants; students' theses and papers; research materials relating to
the Alpha Helix Amazon expedition of 1967; technical and administrative materials related to
Grass Instruments; translations of Russian scientists' publications (although most of the
unpublished translations were inadvertently thrown away during a garage-cleaning);
photographs; slides; films (including copies of his film
Psychologists Here, There,
and Everywhere
, which documents hundreds of scientists at the annual American
Psychological Association meetings from 1946 to 1957); audiotapes; education (from grade
school to graduate school); awards and honors; newspaper and magazine clippings; family,
childhood, and hometown; autobiographical miscellany.
Significant correspondence includes W. Ross Adey, Edgar D. Adrian, Peter (Pyotr) Anokhin,
Frank A. Beach, Ludy T. Benjamin, Edwin G. Boring, Mary A. B. Brazier, Pierre Buser, Carmine
D. Clemente, Otto D. Creutzfeldt, Hallowell Davis, Albert J. Derbyshire, Alexander Forbes,
John D. French, Werner Fr�hlich, Robert Galambos, Fredric A. Gibbs, James J. Gibson, Herbert
H. Jasper, Michel Jouvet, Richard Jung, Vern O. Knudsen, Karl S. Lashley, John C.
Liebeskind, Alexander R. Luria, Horace W. Magoun, Giuseppe Moruzzi, Risto K. Näätänen, Karl
H. Pribram, Charles H. Sawyer, Arnold B. Scheibel, Roger Sperry, Stanley S. (Smitty)
Stevens, Hans-Lukas Teuber, Lee E. Travis, Louis Jolyon (Jolly) West, Charles E. Young.
Materials have been organized into five series:
- a. Education (organized chronologically)
- b. Awards, Honors and Press (organized chronologically)
- c. Family (organized chronologically)
- d. Miscellaneous (organized chronologically)
Items Removed from the Collection
Excessive duplications of publication reprints, photocopies, and copies of various
materials were removed. Some family photos and slides were also removed to be returned to
the family.