SCHMITT, FRANCIS OTTO

(b. St. Louis, Missouri, 23 November 1903; d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 3 October 1995), neuroscience, biophysics, molecular biology, molecular genetics.

Schmitt was the founder of the field of neuroscience through the Neurosciences Research Program that he established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962. Earlier, in the 1950s, he was one of the founders of the field of biophysics. Also, along with various colleagues and collaborators, he revolutionized the biological analysis of the fine structure and molecular properties of proteins (collagen, neurofilaments), cells (especially brain cells—neurons and glia), and various body tissues (connective tissue, muscle). Although he focused his own laboratory research at the molecular level, he was more than a reductionist. Rather, he worked to understand molecular structure and function so that tissue and organ function could be elucidated. His was a long and active career and, in a sense, a continuing love affair with science.

In everything he did Schmitt was committed to the belief that the blending and integration of concepts and methodology from different scientific fields was critical to achieving and accelerating advances in solving biological problems, especially in areas as complex as those involving brain, behavior control, and mind. He had the ability to ask good questions and to bring facts and concepts from a broad range of disciplines together in his own mind to address a biological problem. However, he recognized that no one person or discipline could do all that needed to be done, and so he placed a premium on cross-disciplinary scientific exchange and collaboration. With his broad vision and enthusiasm, he was able to bring colleagues from many disciplines together and stimulate effective discussion and collaboration. The lives and careers of many young—and older—scientists were challenged and changed as a result of his efforts.

Early Interdisciplinary Career Francis O. Schmitt (“Frank,” often referred to as “FOS”) was the son of second-generation German immigrants and the grandson of a Lutheran minister. Raised in a midwestern home by hardworking, innovative parents, Clara (Senniger) and Otto Franz Schmitt, Frank early on showed a strong interest in science. As a schoolboy he had great curiosity about how things, living and otherwise, worked. With his father’s strong encouragement he turned toward medicine; but it was basic biological science that was to be the focus of his professional academic life.

Schmitt earned his BA degree (1924) at Washington University and PhD in physiology (1927) at Washington University Medical School, both in St. Louis. As an undergraduate he came under the influence of cytologist Caswell Grave, with whom he published his first two papers (1924), both concerned with the coordination and regulation of ciliary movement in a mollusk.

In medical school his first mentor was Joseph Erlanger, under whose influence he moved from cytology to physiology. Working with Herbert Gasser and George Bishop as well, he participated in groundbreaking studies on the structure and function of nerves and the action potential, using newly developed x-ray diffraction and polarization optics methods as well as electrical techniques. But ever-curious and with his penchant for looking into any and all topics that caught his interest—scanning the scientific horizon with his “biological radar,” as he sometimes liked to put it—he found time to investigate the structure of the cell membrane and kidney function of the mud puppy, Necturus maculosus, with Harvey L. White. White and he published three papers (1925). Schmitt even took a live demonstration of their techniques to the 1926 International Physiological Conference in Stockholm.

In the spring of 1927, after successfully defending his thesis (“The Conduction of the Impulse through Cold-Blooded Heart Muscle”) and receiving his PhD, Schmitt married Barbara Hecker, a concert-level pianist from St. Louis. (Frank also played piano, but at a much lower level; he and Barbara often played duets together at home.)

Awarded a National Research Council fellowship, Schmitt did postdoctoral work with Gilbert Newton Lewis in the Chemistry Department at the University of California, Berkeley, on the effect of ultrasound waves on the speed of chemical reactions and on the effect of electric currents on the stability of monomolecular lipid films. He continued researching lipid films with Sir Jack Drummond at University College London. He moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin to study the metabolism of nerve fibers with Otto Warburg, and then to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg to continue studies with Otto Meyerhof. Schmitt’s creative ideas and interest in new technology, as well as his ability to ask questions going to the heart of theoretical and experimental issues, often brought him to the attention of other top people, such as Otto Loewi and Rudolf Hoeber.

Upon his return to Washington University from Europe in 1930, Schmitt became an assistant professor of zoology and established a highly productive research program devoted to topics ranging from surface chemistry and neurochemistry to cell ultrastructure and embryology. He and his collaborators (including importantly his younger brother Otto, a brilliant engineer, with whom he developed highly innovative instrumentation techniques) published some one hundred significant papers. Rising through the ranks, Frank eventually became professor and department head. He was an excellent and inspiring teacher who took a real interest in his students—as he always had in everyone with whom he worked.

He maintained his commitment to the importance of interdisciplinary and interpersonal interaction in research, even in informal ways. For example, he founded an informal organization, the “Axonologists,” whose members were attendees at the annual American Physiology Society meeting. This group, from various institutions, consisted of scientists (few at the time) who were studying the axon and nervous transmission. He was proud of this private little society. But it did not last too long: it had to disband in 1934 when it became too large—forty-three members—and one of the members was so gauche as to use lantern slides to illustrate his talk!

From Washington to MIT In 1941, at the invitation of the president of MIT, Karl Compton, Schmitt left Washington University to head MIT’s Department of Biology and Biological Engineering. With a vision for the future of twentieth-century life-sciences research, Schmitt emphasized the molecular approach, both in his leadership of his department and in his own research, thus assuring that the 1940s and 1950s would be productive and exciting times for the life sciences at MIT. A “discovery a day” was the rule according to Jerome Gross and Carl Cori (quoted in Worden et al., 1975, p. xvii).

When Schmitt arrived at MIT, World War II had just begun. The application of the lab’s findings on collagen for the treatment of burns was a great contribution to the war effort. But far beyond this practical aspect of Schmitt’s department’s research was the effort to understand the structure and function of biological fibers. For example, collaborating with Gross and John Highberger (1955), he undertook a systematic analysis of the in vitro reconstitution of the cross-striated fibrils from solutions of collagen molecules. Their analysis demonstrated that various supramolecular forms of collagen could be reconstituted by self-assembly; this led to the determination of the dimensions of the collagen molecule (tropocollagen) and also to the quarter-stagger hypothesis, which accounts for the observed 640-angstrom axial periodicity of the molecule. Schmitt and other colleagues (Al Rubin, Donald Pfahl, Paul Speakman, and Peter Davison) went on to isolate and sequence the non-collagen-like peptides (telopep-tides) at either end of the molecule, which make it immunogenic and are critical to the process of fibrinogenesis as well as to its pathophysiology.

The work with collagen was indeed important, but much more basic science was going on in Schmitt’s MIT laboratories. New techniques of electron microscopy opened new applications of this instrumentation to the life sciences. With Cecil Hall and Marie Jakus, Schmitt (1945) developed heavy-metal stains for use in electron microscopy, and with this new technique he and his colleagues were able to produce some of the earliest electronic micrographs of striated muscle fibers. They correlated this data with data obtained by Richard Bear using x-ray diffraction.

Also in Schmitt’s lab during that period Jean Hanson and Hugh Huxley developed their sliding-filament model of muscle fiber contraction, James D. Robertson developed his unit membrane model of the cell membrane, and Betty Geren Uzman, prompted by observations of myelin ultrastructure, proposed the “jelly-roll” model of myelin assembly. Later, Geren and Schmitt (1980) discovered and began to characterize filamentous proteins in the axon.

Schmitt’s great talents as a theoretician and a hands-on bench scientist and his ability to inspire collaborative interdisciplinary efforts of colleagues were central factors in the many achievements of the Biology Department he founded at MIT. He made it an exciting place filled with enthusiasm and overflowing with ideas. As one of his colleagues, Norman Geschwind, put it in a conversation with this author, working with Schmitt was like “trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant.”

He continued to be acutely aware that the division of science into separate disciplines was an arbitrary administrative convenience that often created barriers to communication. As a trained and experienced physicist/physiologist/chemist he saw the need for a new interdisciplinary perspective that would help to find physical solutions for biological problems. Thus he became a leader in the effort to broaden and reformulate the developing field of biophysics. By its very existence, this new field would encourage the interaction of physics and biology and their ancillary fields and would also encourage the application of the methods and thinking of the physical sciences to the life sciences.

The National Institutes of Health established a Biophysics Study Section in 1955 with Schmitt as its chairman, thus officially recognizing this field. To further review and define “biophysics,” Frank and colleagues organized a four-week conference inviting the major players from around with world to come to the Intensive Study Program in Biophysics held in July–August 1958 at the University of Colorado in Boulder. More than two hundred physicists, biologists, chemists, and scientists from related fields came to Boulder and presented and attended lectures, seminars, and discussions on subjects organized hierarchically from the molecular level to the whole organism. The book that resulted—Biophysical Science: A Study Program (1959)—provided a conceptual and research base on which the new field could develop.

Schmitt’s involvement throughout the meeting and especially in the planning and harvesting stages was a crucial factor in the success of this cross-disciplinary exchange of information. The power of this kind of program in helping establish a new field made such a strong impression on him that he would use this model again, even more successfully, to found and define the new field of “neuroscience.” In 1955, Schmitt was appointed by MIT to be its second “Institute Professor.” The appointment allowed him to leave his administrative responsibilities as department head of biology and to pursue his idea of a new interdisciplinary field of brain research.

Neuroscience The brain and the nervous system had increasingly become Schmitt’s primary research interest. His early work with Erlanger and Gasser in St. Louis he continued in a sense by using the giant axon of the squid to study its action potential and nerve conduction. In the Humboldt Current waters off Viña del Mar, Chile, working with the Marine Biology Station there, he found the huge squid, Dosidicus gigas, with axons of up to 4 millimeters in diameter. He and his team—investigators from the United States and Chile—studied both the constituents of the axoplasm and the mechanism of the action potential. Back at MIT, he conducted the research with the considerably smaller squid, Loligo pealii, which was found in the ocean off Rhode Island and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and which he had earlier worked on while doing postgraduate work at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole in the late 1930s. (He had worked there with the British zoologist John Z. Young, who introduced him to the squid axon preparation.) Bringing the squid back to MIT quickly and in good shape required the use of a refrigerated truck, high speed, and watchfulness for police radar. Stories of adventures en route became legendary.

Other creatures, such as mice, lobsters, and cockroaches; and other topics, such as axonal flow and transport and neurolathyrism, were also part of the lab’s activities. But none was more interesting and productive than the squid and its axon.

Schmitt’s ultimate goal in studying the neuron was to understand the function of the human brain and higher brain function—the mind itself. The invertebrate nervous system was a good place to start, but it was only a start. How does the human brain not only sense the world and produce appropriate responses to it—sensation, perception, emotion, movement—but also learn, remember, use language, and think? Drawing on his earlier experience with the Biophysics Study Section and the creation and development of the field of biophysics, and sensing that the rapid advances in many fields provided the basis for a new multidisciplinary approach to brain and mind, Schmitt conceived of a goal-oriented effort that would do the same thing for this infinitely more complex area— brain and nervous system—that it did for biophysics.

On a trip to Europe in 1959, Schmitt sounded out two physicists, Manfred Eigen (Göttingen) and Werner Heisenberg (Munich) about his idea for an interdisciplinary group that would look at the “physics of the mind.” Eigen was enthusiastic about the idea and expressed interest in being involved. Heisenberg expressed “uncertainty,” and urged Frank to examine carefully the “correctness” of his biophysical and biochemical hypotheses about brain structure and function before launching such an organization.

Accordingly, Schmitt organized two seminars in the area at MIT in 1960 and 1961. The first was on fast transfer reactions and stemmed from Eigen’s Nobel Prize work. The other, on macromolecular specificity and biological memory, brought together many of the leaders in the field of brain research at that time; this resulted in a book by that name (1962). The “modest” goal of this seminar and book, as quoted from its introduction, was to “help bridge the gap between physical, chemical, and structural studies of the brain on the one hand, and behavioral, psychological, and psychiatric aspects on the other.” The talks and discussions raised more questions than answers, of course, but were a rousing success.

Now convinced of the practicality of the interdisciplinary neurobiological research effort he was planning, Frank contacted a small group of outstanding scientists from around the world representing various of the physical and life sciences. These were all people he knew or had worked with, who interacted well, and who were interested in understanding the brain. He arranged an organizing meeting, which was held on 1 February 1962 in New York at the apartment of friends, Louis and Genie Marron. Louis Marron was a wealthy industrialist and sport fisherman who had helped Schmitt gather giant squid in the waters off Chile.

The focus of the informal meeting was to explore the status of the biophysics and biochemistry of “mental processes.” Schmitt presented his proposal that, in order to pursue this Promethean quest for understanding the mind/brain, it would be necessary to create a new kind of organization that would enable the productive interaction of many scientists from different disciplines all interacting to achieve this goal. It would be like the program which had defined the new field of biophysics, but on a much larger scale. He explained that the goal of understanding the brain/mind was important for its own sake but also for improving human abilities, preventing and treating nervous system malfunctions and diseases, and understanding and controlling the human penchant for violence, both on the personal and the broad scale (we were in the midst of the Cold War at the time).

With his great enthusiasm, Schmitt was able to persuade these eminent and productive scientists, accustomed to pursuing their own personal goals and interests, to join together in this idealistic “mission” of solving the most difficult of all mysteries, the workings of the brain and mind. They agreed to form a governing board, the “Associates,” to serve as the guiding council of the new organization. First called the Mensa (mind) Program, the group finally decided on the word neuroscience, even though some thought the word smacked too much of neurology and did not explicitly bring in other dimensions: mind, behavior, and so forth. But the name stuck. And so began the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP).

NRP officially and administratively remained part of MIT, and Schmitt maintained his institute professorship. But he located the new organization off-campus, joining the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the lovely Brandegee Estate in Brookline, near Cambridge and MIT. The new headquarters were big enough for several meeting rooms, offices, a library, and a spacious dining room where the notable scientists from around the world who had been invited to present their ideas and findings could be entertained. Schmitt felt that because these invited scientists were the stars of the science world, if one treated them like stars they would perform like stars.

At the first meeting at the new headquarters, August 1962, Schmitt’s talk was typical of the way he could present a practical course of action wrapped in his own infectious enthusiasm:

It is the aim and wish of our group to attempt a synthesis over many interstitial areas of biology and physics and chemistry and neurology and behavioral science … to understand basic matters concerning how the brain functions, questions of mental processes, the mind, if you will.… Much of the functioning will eventually depend on the molecular and macromolecular machinery … and much that has been learned in molecular genetics will apply also to molecular neurology … (excerpted from informal notes taken at the meeting)

So in one brief informal statement, he was able to hint at all manner of new directions brain research might go, touching on an amalgam of recent breakthroughs in physics as well as molecular biology and neurology, which might possibly provide the mechanisms underlying brain function.

To make sure that the “dries” (scientists involved primarily in behavior) would be well represented, Frank recruited Gardner Quarton, an outstanding Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist, to be program director of the NRP and to help oversee its science programs and administration of science staff.

A major effort of the NRP from 1962 to 1982 became the planning and staging of work sessions, two- or three-day meetings of twenty to twenty-five experts in a particular subject area, a “hot topic” that was judged to be central to brain research and which needed an interdisciplinary information boost. With the assistance of staff scientists, visiting scientists (including such luminaries as John Szentagothai, Eric Lenneberg, Detlev Ploog, Mac Edds, and Bob Galambos), and advice from the NRP associates, many of the hot topics of neuroscience were defined and explored, many to become the subjects of one of the four to six work sessions per year. Many of these work session subjects have now become the day-to-day areas of neuroscience research: the synapse, neurotransmitters, cell receptors, axoplasmic transport, sleep, sensory transduction, schizophrenia, language development, and so forth, but at the time they were underdeveloped areas, relatively unstudied.

The work session results were published in the Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin, a 100–150 page monograph series created by Schmitt’s new communications director, Ted Melnechuck. It was widely distributed to libraries and laboratories (at no charge for the first ten years) and also helped make this new science a reality.

At the planning sessions and during the work sessions, Frank was indeed, in Gerald Edelman’s words, the ultimate “scientist impresario” (quoted in Worden et al., 1975, p. 73). He organized and supervised the NRP staff people working on the planning session; and then, when the decision was finally made to go with the topic as a work session, helped program the coverage of each invited participant so that each presentation would elide with and not interfere with another’s presentations. At the work session itself, he helped introduce each section to ensure that the key theoretical and experimental issues would be covered; and then helped the work session chair orchestrate the interactions and discussions at the concluding session.

After the work sessions he worked with the NRP editorial staff who prepared the summaries of presentations and discussions to be sent to the work session chair and participants, and which would be the basis for the eventual NRP Bulletin manuscript. He insisted that each Bulletin fairly represent each participant, give credit to each, and not allow the work of established “stars” to outshine the work of the less-well known newcomers to the field. There were well over one hundred work sessions from 1963 to 1982, and eighty NRP Bulletins were published and widely distributed during those twenty years.

Schmitt was a perfectionist, and his work habits were, to say the least, unusual. He worked, literally, day and night. After a full day at the Biology Department, and, later, at the NRP Center, he would go home for dinner, perhaps relax a bit with music, play duets with Barbara— or maybe just listen to her play—and then retire to bed at 10 or 11. He would be up again at 4 or 5 a.m., work until breakfast, and then off to the NRP. When the staff arrived, the day’s work would have been arranged and he would be fully prepared for discussions and program planning. A short nap at lunchtime would revive him for a vigorous afternoon of work.

The other major NRP program involved a concerted effort to describe the contours and content of neuroscience by means of intensive study programs (ISPs). Using the model of the earlier Biophysics Study Program, which had helped create the field of biophysics, Schmitt’s NRP staff and NRP associates programmed and staged four, three- to four-week “Neuroscience Intensive Study Programs” from 1967 to 1977. These were also held at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado and involved a faculty of more than two hundred specially invited scientific experts to cover in lectures, symposia, and discussions the primary areas of neuroscience. Fifty selected junior scientists were also on hand at each ISP to learn more about the elements of neuroscience and to join in the formal and informal discussions.

The goal of these ISPs was to define clearly the parameters of neuroscience and to announce to the world that this new field of neuroscience had arrived, that it was, indeed, an interdisciplinary science, and that it would eventually be able to confront the age-old ultimate question of both philosophy and science, how does the mind/brain work. The four cocktail-table-size books, more than nine hundred pages each (the first two published by Rockefeller University Press, the last two by MIT Press) had an enormous effect on the world of science, especially on newly arriving neuroscientists. They are still in use in schools and colleges around the world in the early twenty-first century.

All this innovation and hard work were worthwhile. The work sessions, NRP Bulletins, and the Boulder books—the four massive Neuroscience Study Programs— plus the other NRP books and journal articles, did indeed play a significant role in the creation of this important worldwide multi/interdisciplinary science, involving broad basic as well as clinical/medical relevance. Eight years after Schmitt began the Neurosciences Research Program, the Society for Neuroscience was established. It has grown to more than thirty-five thousand members. Of the first twelve presidents of the society, ten were or had been NRP associates. Frank was justifiably proud of the NRP and of the influence of this “invisible college” that, in the twenty-five years of his involvement, had over three thousand alumni, most of whom were or were later to become the leaders in the field. Several Nobel laureates were in their ranks.

Thus, at the age of fifty-nine, Schmitt had embarked on a new major program, perhaps the most ambitious of his career. With enthusiasm and vision he set the course for the NRP that it followed for the next twenty years: interdisciplinary attacks on neuroscience questions, basic and clinical, staging of interdisciplinary meetings and comprehensive study programs (three-day work sessions and three- to four-week ISPs), recruitment of notable scientists and junior scientists from various fields into neuro-science. An example of one of his recruitment efforts was the neuroanatomy course Schmitt staged at MIT in 1965 for scientists (including several Nobelists) from outside fields who were interested in knowing more about the brain and might even get involved in brain research. The course was taught by such notables as Walle Nauta, Sanford Palay, Robert Galambos, and Jay Angevine.

When Quarton left to become director of the University of Michigan Mental Health Research Institute, Schmitt recruited Fred Worden, psychiatry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, to be program director. Later, when Schmitt turned seventy and was no longer allowed by MIT and National Institutes of Health rules to be principal investigator, this multitalented neuroscientist took over as the NRP director. But Schmitt stayed on as “foundation scientist,” solemnly promising he would not interfere, or at least try not to interfere, with Worden’s new leadership. He still continued to put in his long work days and nights, perhaps spending more time with staff scientists and the new NRP program directors Mac Edds and Barry Smith.

Other Activities During his long and active life Schmitt made many important contributions to science, but beyond this he was a husband and father deeply devoted to his wife Barbara, and children David, Robert, and Marian. Music and religion always remained important in his world. Born and brought up a Lutheran, he was a regular churchgoer, active in his later years in the Congregational Church. Through the years he worked to bring the separate worlds of science and religion together and organized gatherings of scientists and theologians to try to reconcile the separate worlds of faith and objective science.

As if all these activities were not enough, Schmitt served for more than forty years as a trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital and of the McLean Hospital (Harvard Medical School’s affiliated mental hospital). At Massachusetts General he was a charter member of the Committee on Research (from 1947) and organized the Scientific Advisory Committee (from 1948). Although he had turned away from clinical medicine himself to work in the basic biological sciences, he never lost sight of the fact that knowledge gained in basic science should be made available to help sick and suffering human beings as part of what he called the practice of “wholesale medicine.” He contributed greatly to medicine, not only with his own discoveries, but also through his training of many MDs at various levels of their careers.

Frank Schmitt was a unique combination of theoretician and experimental scientist plus leader, organizer, inspirer, and helper of others. His practical focus was the molecular and even the submolecular. But his deepest interest was in how the brain worked to produce higher brain function and mind, and, ultimately, human spirit and soul.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A more complete list may be found in Schmitt’s autobiography, The Never-Ceasing Search (1990).

WORKS BY SCHMITT

With C. Grave. “A Mechanism for the Coordination and Regulation of the Movement of Cilia of Epithelia.” Science 60 (1924): 246–248.

With H. L. White. “Observations on Kidney Function in Necturus maculosus.” Science 62 (1925): 334.

“The Conduction of the Impulse through Cold-Blooded Heart Muscle.” PhD diss., Washington University, St. Louis, 1927.

“On the Oxidative Nature of the Nerve Impulse.” Science 72 (1930): 583–584.

With Otto H. Schmitt. “A Vacuum Tube Method of Temperature Control.” Science 73 (1931): 289–290.

“The Oxygen Consumption of Stimulated Nerve.” American Journal of Physiology 104 (1933): 303–319.

With Richard S. Bear and G. L. Clark. “X-ray Diffraction Studies on Nerve.” Radiology 25 (1935): 131.

With Richard S. Bear and John Z. Young. “Some Physical and Chemical Properties of the Axis Cylinder of the Giant Axons of the Squid, Loligo pealii.” Biological Bulletin 71 (1936): 402.

———. “The Sheath Components of the Giant Nerve Fibres of the Squid.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 123 (1937): 496–505.

“Optical Studies of the Molecular Organization of Living Systems.” Journal of Applied Physics 9 (1938): 109–117.

With Otto H. Schmitt. “Partial Excitation and Variable Conduction in the Squid Giant Axon.” Journal of Physiology 98 (1940): 26–46.

With Cecil E. Hall and Marie A. Jakus. “The Structure of Certain Muscle Fibrils as Revealed by the Use of Electron Stains.” Journal of Applied Physics 16 (1945): 459–465.

With Richard S. Bear, Cecil E. Hall, and Marie A. Jakus. “Electron Microscope and X-ray Diffraction Studies of Muscle Structure.” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 47 (1947): 799.

With Jerome Gross. “The Structure of Human Skin Collagen as Studied with the Electron Microscope.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 88 (1948): 555–568.

With Betty B. Geren. “The Fibrous Structure of the Nerve Axon in Relation to the Localization of ‘Neurotubules.’” Journal of Experimental Medicine 91 (1950): 499–504.

With Jerome Gross and John H. Highberger. “Tropocollagen and the Properties of Fibrous Collagen.” Experimental Cell Research, Supplement 3 (1955): 326–334.”

Macromolecular Interaction Patterns in Biological Systems.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 100 (1956): 476–486.

With Paul Doty, et al. “Symposium on Biomolecular Organization and Life-Processes.” Special Issue, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 42 (1956): 780–830.

With Melvin J. Glimcher and Alan J. Hodge. “Macromolecular Aggregation States in Relation to Mineralization: The Collagen-Hydroxyapatite System as Studied in Vitro.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 43 (1957): 860–867.

With John Lawrence Oncley, R. C. Williams, M. D. Rosenberg, et al., eds. Biophysical Science: A Study Program. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1959.

Editor. Fast Fundamental Transfer Processes in Aqueous Biomolecular Systems. Cambridge, MA, 1960. Lecture Series. MIT Department of Biology.

Editor. Macromolecular Specificity and Biological Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962.

With Albert L. Rubin, et al. “Tropocollagen: Significance of Protease-Induced Alterations.” Science 139 (1963): 37–39.

“Molecular and Ultrastructural Correlates of Function in Neurons, Neuronal Nets and the Brain. Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin (NRP Bulletin)2, no. 3 (1964): 43–75.

With P. F. Davison. “Chemical, Structural, and Immunological Studies of Nerve Axon Protein.” Berichte der Bunsen-Gesellschaft für physikalische Chemie 68 (1964): 887–889. “The Physical Basis of Life and Learning.” Science 140 (1965): 931–936.

With Theodore Melnechuk, et al., eds. Neurosciences Research Symposium Summaries. Vol. l. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966.

With Gardner C. Quarton and Theodore Melnechuk, eds. The Neurosciences: A Study Program. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1967.

With Theodore Melnechuk, Gardner C. Quarton, and George Adelman, eds. Neurosciences Research Symposium Summaries. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967.

“The Divine Spiral: Eternal Verities in a Rapidly Changing World.” Messenger 7 (1968): 4–10. New England Lutheran Federation.

With Frederick E. Samson Jr., eds. “Neuronal Fibrous Proteins.” Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin 6 (1968): 113–219.

With F. E. Samson Jr., eds. “Brain Cell Microenvironment.” Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin7, no. 4 (1969): 279–417.

“Molecular Neurobiology: An Interpretive Survey.” In The Neurosciences: Second Study Program, edited by Francis O. Schmitt. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1970.

With Floyd E. Bloom and Leslie L. Iversen, eds. “Macromolecules in Synaptic Function.” Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin8, no. 4 (1970): 325–455.

With L. C. Mokrasch, eds. “Myelin: A Report of a Work Session.” Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin9, no. 4 (1970): 439–598.

With Frederick G. Worden, eds. The Neurosciences: Third Study Program. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1973.

With Diane M. Schneider and Donald M. Crothers, eds. Functional Linkage in Biomolecular Systems. New York: Raven Press, 1975.

With Parvati Dev and Barry H. Smith. “Electrotonic Processing of Information by Brain Cells.” Science 193 (1976): 114–120.

With Frederick G. Worden, eds. The Neurosciences: Fourth Study Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.

With Stephanie J. Bird and Floyd E. Bloom, eds. Molecular Genetic Neuroscience. New York: Raven Press, 1982.

“Molecular Genetic Neuroscience: A New Hybrid.” IBRO News 11 (1983): 7–12.

“Molecular Regulators of Brain Function: A New View.” Neuroscience 13 (1984): 991–1001.

“Adventures in Molecular Biology.” Annual Review of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry 14 (1985): 1–22.

The Never-Ceasing Search. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1990. Autobiography.

OTHER SOURCES

Adelman, George, and Barry Smith. “Francis Otto Schmitt, November 23, 1903–October 3, 1995.” Biographical Memoirs. Vol. 75. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1998. Available from http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/fschmitt.pdf.

Worden, Frederick G., Judith P. Swazey, and George Aldelman, eds. Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975.

George Adelman
Barry H. Smith