1995 Education Award in Neuroscience

Dr. W. Maxwell Cowan 

Dr. Cowan was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1931. He attended Witwatersand University in Johannesburg, South Africa where he received a B.Sc. degree and then received his Ph.D. degree in 1956 from Oxford University in England.

From 1953 to 1966 he was a Lecturer in Anatomy at Pembroke College and Balliol College. In 1966, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine before accepting the Chairmanship of the Department of Anatomy at Washington University in St. Louis in 1968. In 1982, he accepted the position of Vice President of The Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and then returned to Washington University in 1986. Since 1988, he has been a Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience at The John Hopkins University School of Medicine and also served as Vice President and Chief Scientific Office of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Dr. Cowan has received such awards as the Karl Spencer Lashley Prize for Neurobiology in 1984, the Second Century Award from Washington University School of Medicine in 1993 and a Dana Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in Health in 1993.