Thanks for this thread 1MileCrash. There is one person who really had a huge influence in my life, not only professionally but personally and spiritually. The reason I am thanking you is that if I started the thread myself, it would unequivocally brand myself as obsequious. So now I can just blame you. Lol.
This person is Walter Freeman (III), whom I reference frequently here, so it's no mystery, but here's an opportunity to present my gratefulness to him in a formal context. It's difficult really to classify him, which is an immediate indication of his genius. His knowledge and contributions to neuroscience just span and transcend so many disciplines he really is in a class all his own. He single-handedly set the standard on how to understand large scale dynamic intertactions in the brain with his landmark book, "Mass action in the nervous system", along with several hundred journal publications. This book was decades ahead of its time and preguessed a lot of what resting state network fMRI studies would bear out 30 years later.
He was (is) a self-proclaimed biophysicist but waxed philosophic prose that rivaled any of the classics, and had the biophysical street cred to back it up. I can honestly say I did not only learn neurobiology from this person, I learned a new way to look at life in general, which was invaluable. If you want a great popular book to read by him, try "Society of brains"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805820175/?tag=pfamazon01-20
The impact he has had on the wealth of graduate students that have moved through his lab is telling. I wasn't one of them personally, but I know a number of them, and the impact on them goes much deeper than just a professional association. Here's an example of the regard he is held to. Leslie Kay's "10 things I learned from Walter."
https://archive.org/details/Brain_Network_Dynamics_2007-04_Leslie_Kay
It goes a lot deeper than just the hard science, and for that he is my hero (along with Einstein and George Carlin, nod to Wukunlin)
