Mortimer Mishkin

Mortimer Mishkin (December 13, 1926 – October 2, 2021) was an American neuropsychologist, and winner of the 2009 National Medal of Science awarded in Behavior and Social Science.

Life and career Born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in December 1926, Mishkin graduated from Dartmouth College in 1946, and took a 1949 M.A. and 1951 Ph.D. from McGill University under Donald O. Hebb. His Ph.D. thesis was partly directed by surgeon and theorist Karl H. Pribram.

In 2010 Mishkin won the National Medal of Science for his five decades of work on the mechanisms of cognition and memory, and the discovery that the brain processes memories in two separate processes: cognitive memory dealing with events and fresh information, and behavioral memory related to skills and habits.

As of 2016 Mishkin was Chief of the Section on Cognitive Neuroscience, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, chartered to explore neurobiological mechanisms of perception and memory. He is also recognised for his role in establishing the two streams hypothesis on the organisation of extrastriate visual cortex (with Leslie Ungerleider).

Mishkin died in October 2021, at the age of 94.

Awards APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, 1985 William James Fellow Award, awarded by the Association for Psychological Science, 1989 Ariëns Kappers Medal, 1989 Karl Spencer Lashley Award, for "pioneering analysis of the memory and the perceptual systems of the brain, and his seminal contributions to the understanding of the higher nervous system function", 1996 Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease, 1999 National Medal of Science, 2010 Grawemeyer Award given by the University of Louisville, 2012 NAS Award in the Neurosciences, 2016