News & Comment

Horace Basil Barlow, Fellow of the Royal Society, winner of the Australia Prize, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Schwartz Prize of the Society for Neuroscience, died on 5 July 2020 at the age of 98, 10 days after suffering a stroke. As news spread among his former students and collaborators, one phrase recurred again and again in the messages of nostalgic reflection: ‘the end of an era’.

Ronald S. Duman, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities of the Connecticut Mental Health Center, died unexpectedly of a heart attack on 1 February 2020 while hiking near his home in Guilford, CT. Dr Duman was about to turn 65 years old. He was a member of the US National Academy of Medicine and received many honors for his research on mood disorders, including the Colvin Prize, from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and the Anna-Monika Foundation Prize.

On 2 January 2020, the neuroscience community lost not only a pioneering figure, but also a generous and influential thought leader. Bruce Sherman McEwen, head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller University, passed away at age 81, following a short illness. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and former president of the Society for Neuroscience, Bruce will be remembered for his profound scientific impact, measured not only by output of papers, but also by the large family of neuroscientists he trained over a career spanning nearly six decades. Above all, Bruce will be remembered for his generosity, kindness, gentleness of soul, and for being an extraordinary mentor.