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Views | Duration | ||
---|---|---|---|
1. Memories of a Viennese childhood | 2 | 260 | 02:48 |
2. My gifted brother Ludwig | 287 | 01:09 | |
3. How Hitler annexed Austria | 224 | 03:34 | |
4. Annexation to Germany ignites Austrian anti-Semitism | 188 | 01:33 | |
5. Saved by my mother's prescience | 166 | 01:26 | |
6. Kristallnacht – the turning point in my family's history | 166 | 03:12 | |
7. Sailing to Hoboken | 128 | 02:38 | |
8. Going to school in America | 142 | 01:52 | |
9. Falling in love | 183 | 01:10 | |
10. Transformed by my time at Erasmus Hall | 122 | 01:52 |
I went to an elementary school on a Schulgasse, and I followed the steps that my brother had preceded me in, with the same teachers. And he was an extraordinary student. In my early years, all I heard was how great Lewis was. He learned how to play the piano from a girl that he knew. He was knowledgeable in Latin but I was just beginning to learn how to read and write. He went to a very well-known gymnasium, an academic gymnasium, and he was the outstanding student there. I still meet people who remember him. So wherever I went, that was Ludwig Kandel’s little brother; it was not an enviable position.
My brother was also technically quite gifted. So he developed a shortwave radio set. And we were listening together when Hitler marched into Austria, and then into Vienna, in March of 1938. Now this had sort of an interesting prelude.
Eric Kandel (b. 1929) is an American neuropsychiatrist. He was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He shared the prize with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard. Kandel, who had studied psychoanalysis, wanted to understand how memory works. His mentor, Harry Grundfest, said, 'If you want to understand the brain you're going to have to take a reductionist approach, one cell at a time.' Kandel then studied the neural system of the sea slug Aplysia californica, which has large nerve cells amenable to experimental manipulation and is a member of the simplest group of animals known to be capable of learning. Kandel is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also Senior Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was the founding director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, which is now the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. Kandel's popularized account chronicling his life and research, 'In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind', was awarded the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Science and Technology.
Title: My gifted brother Ludwig
Listeners: Christopher Sykes
Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.
Tags: Ludwig Kandel, Adolf Hitler
Duration: 1 minute, 9 seconds
Date story recorded: June 2015
Date story went live: 04 May 2016