Frank W. Stahnisch – författare

In recent decades, developments in research technologies and therapeutic advances have generated immense public recognition for neuroscience. However, its origins as a field, often linked to partnerships and projects at various brain-focused research centres in the United States during the 1960s, can be traced much further back in time. In A New Field in Mind Frank Stahnisch documents and analyzes the antecedents of the modern neurosciences as an interdisciplinary field. Although postwar American research centres, such as Francis O. Schmitt''s Neuroscience Research Program at MIT, brought the modern field to prominence, Stahnisch reveals the pioneering collaborations in the early brain sciences at centres in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the first half of the twentieth century. One of these, Heinrich Obersteiner''s institute in Vienna, began its work in the 1880s. Through case studies and collective biographies, Stahnisch investigates the evolving relationships between disciplines – anatomy, neurology, psychiatry, physiology, serology, and neurosurgery – which created new epistemological and social contexts for brain research. He also shows how changing political conditions in Central Europe affected the development of the neurosciences, ultimately leading to the expulsion of many physicians and researchers under the Nazi regime and their migration to North America. An in-depth and innovative study, A New Field in Mind tracks the emergence and evolution of neuroscientific research from the late nineteenth century to the postwar period.

The twentieth century witnessed two devastating world wars that led to the exodus of millions of people. Counted among them were hundreds of neuroscientists and biological psychiatrists from Nazi Germany and its surrounding countries who were forced to emigrate in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them settled in North America, where they profoundly influenced the development of the biomedical sciences.

Focusing on the years between 1933 and 1989, Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of this forced migration on scientific and medical cultures in North America and on the researchers themselves. Frank Stahnisch traces the lives and careers of approximately four hundred German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. Placed in unfamiliar research settings in Canada and the United States, they helped to build the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, and the cognitive sciences, even as they rebuilt their own lives amid myriad challenges including cultural adaption and the complications of relicensing. Stahnisch explores how generational factors, gender, international networking, refugee organizations, and national funding agencies shaped their experiences and affected postwar remigration.

Great Minds in Despair provides an important revision to the brain gain thesis in migration studies by turning attention to the working conditions and social acculturation of an influential academic refugee group in North America.

The twentieth century witnessed two devastating world wars that led to the exodus of millions of people. Counted among them were hundreds of neuroscientists and biological psychiatrists from Nazi Germany and its surrounding countries who were forced to emigrate in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them settled in North America, where they profoundly influenced the development of the biomedical sciences.

Focusing on the years between 1933 and 1989, Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of this forced migration on scientific and medical cultures in North America and on the researchers themselves. Frank Stahnisch traces the lives and careers of approximately four hundred German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. Placed in unfamiliar research settings in Canada and the United States, they helped to build the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, and the cognitive sciences, even as they rebuilt their own lives amid myriad challenges including cultural adaption and the complications of relicensing. Stahnisch explores how generational factors, gender, international networking, refugee organizations, and national funding agencies shaped their experiences and affected postwar remigration.

Great Minds in Despair provides an important revision to the brain gain thesis in migration studies by turning attention to the working conditions and social acculturation of an influential academic refugee group in North America.

The forced migration of neuroscientists, both during and after the Second World War, is of growing interest to international scholars. Of particular interest is how the long-term migration of scientists and physicians has affected both the academic migrants and their receiving environments. As well as the clash between two different traditions and systems, this migration forced scientists and physicians to confront foreign institutional, political, and cultural frameworks when trying to establish their own ways of knowledge generation, systems of logic, and cultural mentalities.

The twentieth century has been called the century of war and forced-migration, since it witnessed two devastating world wars, prompting a massive exodus that included many neuroscientists and psychiatrists. Fascism in Italy and Spain beginning in the 1920s, Nazism in Germany and Austria between the 1930s and 1940s, and the impact of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe all forced more than two thousand researchers with prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and the basic brain research disciplines to leave their scientific and academic home institutions. This edited volume, comprising of thirteen chapters written by international specialists, reflects on the complex dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by using relevant case studies, biographies, and surveys. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

The forced migration of neuroscientists, both during and after the Second World War, is of growing interest to international scholars. Of particular interest is how the long-term migration of scientists and physicians has affected both the academic migrants and their receiving environments. As well as the clash between two different traditions and systems, this migration forced scientists and physicians to confront foreign institutional, political, and cultural frameworks when trying to establish their own ways of knowledge generation, systems of logic, and cultural mentalities.

The twentieth century has been called the century of war and forced-migration, since it witnessed two devastating world wars, prompting a massive exodus that included many neuroscientists and psychiatrists. Fascism in Italy and Spain beginning in the 1920s, Nazism in Germany and Austria between the 1930s and 1940s, and the impact of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe all forced more than two thousand researchers with prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and the basic brain research disciplines to leave their scientific and academic home institutions. This edited volume, comprising of thirteen chapters written by international specialists, reflects on the complex dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by using relevant case studies, biographies, and surveys. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.