Gerry Fischbach was one of the first people I met when I joined the editorial advisory board of Spectrum—now The Transmitter—just over a decade ago. I had heard of Gerry’s pioneering work as a neuroscientist and as a dean or director of some of science’s leading institutions: Columbia University, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and others.
So I was a bit intimidated, to be honest, when he joined a meeting of the board. But any anxiety was quickly put to rest. Gerry is always curious about the other people in a conversation, encouraging them to trust their instincts even as he presses for evidence behind decisions.
In 2023, I had the privilege of turning the tables on Gerry: Curious about his life and career, I sat with him over the course of several days and just listened as he told his story so that we could record it for posterity as part of Web of Stories, an online archive of videos featuring hundreds of people who have shaped our world, from Nobel Prize winners to leading novelists.
Start with his description of his “movement disorder,” which caused him to jump from roles at Harvard and Washington University to Columbia and NINDS. Follow along as he discusses his early work “on the neuromuscular junction, trying to find evidence that acetylcholine had a presynaptic action.” And learn about his experience working with neuroscience luminaries from Tom Jessell to Catherine Lord to Rod MacKinnon.
Find out how a pastrami sandwich on New York City’s Upper West Side led him to the Simons Foundation, where he was long the driving force behind the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative and many other neuroscience programs. Don’t miss his deep love for his family—or the time he was fired from the National Institutes of Health.
Thanks to the Simons Foundation’s Rebecca Sesny for filming and Monika Flang at Web of Stories for editing and producing these 75 brief but chock-filled chapters. Enjoy.
