Oliver Louis Zangwill

From the Dictionary of National Biography:

ZANGWILL, Oliver Louis (1913-1987), a founder of neuropsychology, was born 29 October 1913 in East Preston, Sussex, the youngest of three children and second son in the family of Israel Zangwill (qv), the Anglo-Jewish literary and political figure, and his wife, Edith Ayrton, who was active in the establishment of the League of Nations. A cousin was the painter and writer Michael Ayrton, the common grandfather being the physicist William Ayrton FRS (qv). Oliver was educated at University College School, London (1928-31), and King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a second class in part i of the natural sciences tripos (1934), and a first in part ii of the moral sciences tripos (1935).
At Cambridge Zangwill was influenced by (Sir) Frederick Bartlett (qv), while carrying out experiments on recognition and memory. With his lifelong friend R C Oldfield, he wrote a critique of the celebrated concept of mental schema put forward by Sir Henry Head (qv) and Barlett. Another influence was J T McCurdy, who intrigued Zangwill with hypnosis, which he later demonstrated to great effect on his students. Zangwill studied patients with Korsakoff psychosis, his paper 'Amnesia and the Generic Image' (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol ii, 1950) remaining significant for the subject of whether semantic memory remains intact in amnesia. There is a story of a Korsakoff patient he saw each week when, taking a pen from his pocket, he asked: 'Have you seen this before?' Every week the patient would say 'No.' At the final session Zangwill asked: 'Have you seen me before?' The patient replied: 'Are you the man with all those pens?'
Zangwill became a research psychologist at the Brain Injuries Unit in Edinburgh (1940-5), which was directed by Norman Dott. There he did original, influential work on the psychological effects of penetrating wounds to the brain. His studies of cases of parietal lobe injury, with Andrew Patterson, led to his interest in hemispheric specialization and the complexities of right/left-handedness. His central aim was to use clinical abnormalities, especially symptoms of localized brain damage, to suggest how the normal brain functions.
While assistant director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford (1945-52), Zangwill promoted the teaching of psychology when it was not considered a major subject, in spite of its importance at Cambridge. By establishing connections with the National Institute of Neurology in Queen Square, London, and the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, he introduced a generation of psychologists to the study of neurological patients. His students included Geroge Ettlinger, John McFie, Malcolm Piercy, Maria Wyke, Elizabeth Warrington, and Brenda Milner, all of whom became distinguished neuropsychologists. Appointed to the Cambridge chair (1952-81), with a fellowship of King's College, in his inaugural lecture he defined psychology as 'the study of behaviour', though he was never a behaviourist. Zangwill brought Lawrence Weiskrantz from America to set up a primate laboratory, with far-reaching consequences, especially as a result of Weiskrantz's continuing work as professor of psychology at Oxford.
Zangwill took a major part in setting up the Experimental Psychology Group, which was very influential, though it was sometimes critically described as an elitist Cambridge and Oxford Club. It became the larger Experimental Psychology Society, with its quarterly Journal, which Zangwill edited from 1958 to 1966, serving also on the editorial board of Neuropsychologia (1963-81). His 'An Introduction to Modern Psychology' (1950) set out pathways to be followed. He also wrote 'Amnesia' (1966) and edited, with W H Thorpe, 'Current Problems in Animal Behaviour' (1961).
Zangwill was elected FRS in 1977. He had honorary degrees from Stirling (1979) and St Andrews (1980). - He held the honorary post of visiting psychologist at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases (1947-79), and had close connections with European clinical neurology and in the United States, with Hans-Lukas Teuber at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A tall stooping figure, with dark hair and green-grey eyes that looked everywhere, Zangwill had an elusive, almost haunted personality with moments of witty appreciation. He had several close friendhips, but was generally a very private person, whose thoughts were hard to interpret and whose decisions were often unpredictable, though not lacking in shrewdness [to be continued]