- Email: [email protected]
Jon Driver (1962-2011)
Obituary
Jon Driver (1962-2011) Raymond J. Dolan1, Stavroula Kousta2 and Geraint Rees1,3 1
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK 2 Editor, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK
Jon Driver, one of the world’s leading cognitive neuroscientists and a member of the TiCS Advisory Editorial Board, died on 28 November 2011 at the age of 49. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Jon attended Hymers College in Hull, where the family moved. He read experimental psychology at Queen’s College, Oxford, and graduated with a first class degree in 1984. He obtained a DPhil from Oxford University in 1988, under the supervision of Alan Allport and Peter McLeod. After spending some time at the University of Oregon as a visiting assistant professor, he returned to the United Kingdom to take up a lectureship at the University of Cambridge. He moved to Birkbeck College in the late 1990s and then to University College London, where he became Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2004. At the time of his death, he held a Royal Society Anniversary Research Professorship. Jon carried out pioneering work in attention, multisensory integration and spatial cognition, authoring more than 240 scientific articles. His work combined innovative thinking, experimental rigor and a trademark meticulous attention to detail, and his scientific contributions were acknowledged in his election as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2005) and Fellow of the British Academy (2008). Jon had been a member of the TiCS Editorial Board since the early days of the journal’s existence. His insightful advice, enthusiastic engagement with the journal and unfaltering support helped shape both the content and identity of TiCS over the years. His sharp intellect and avuncular style earned him the respect of colleagues and students alike. In the quotes that follow, colleagues and friends recount the numerous ways in which his work and personality impacted on those who worked closely with him, as well as on the field of cognitive neuroscience. For more contributions, please visit the blog created to celebrate his memory (http://jondriver19622011.blogspot.com/). ‘‘Conversations with Jon – about science or practically anything – were some of the best, the liveliest, the most enriching I have had in all my long life. He was so sharp, so zestfully open-minded, so serious – and yet so playful. [. . .] Corresponding authors: Dolan, R.J. ([email protected]); Kousta, S. ([email protected]); Rees, G. ([email protected]).
As an undergraduate, it was obvious already he was a superstar. But instead of going on immediately to do a PhD, Jon opted to spend a year as a research assistant (with Peter McLeod and me), to give himself time to figure out what line of research he really wanted to pursue. This deep humility and thoughtfulness, and deep commitment to ‘getting it right’ and getting to the truth, were the hallmark of everything Jon did. After that year, once launched on a PhD, he completed it at lightning speed and with the absolute minimum of supervision from me (just lots of those hugely enjoyable, wide-ranging conversations!). And of course, from then on I just watched him fly. [. . .]’’ Alan Allport
‘‘I knew him through his sister when we were all at school in Hull – and later at Oxford. He played the bass in a local band, The London Boys – Stax/Motown covers and their own songs in a similar style. You can find one of their songs on YouTube if you look hard enough. Jon was a sharp dresser, one of the few guys able to make white jeans look cool. In fact, he was a cool guy all round – very clever, funny and kind.’’ John Pullman
‘‘I met Jon shortly after he arrived in the States to work with Mike Posner and Steve Keele as Oregon’s first McDonnell-Pew Scholar. I was in my first year at UC Santa Barbara and Jon and Gordon Baylis came up from San Diego to visit my lab. I don’t remember much of our conversation that day nor of the dinner that evening. But what does stand out is what happened after dinner. Jon and Gordon looked a bit impish and asked if they might borrow the keys to my lab. Seems that they had been kicking around an idea and wanted to go back to the lab and see if they could program something up (in our pre-laptop days). Off they went, me, regretfully, feeling obliged to stay at home with my wife and our young son. Jon and Gordon never made it back to the house. They ended up working all night, playing with one display after another, and had the experiment sorted out by morning. Jon laid out the experimental plan 189
Obituary when I came in the next day and, in a pattern to be repeated over the years, I struggled to follow, either because I couldn’t quite match the Mach 3 speed of his mind or make heads or tails of the mumbled British accent. With patience, Jon made the elegance of the study clear. If memory serves me right, the manuscript – with eight experiments – was ready just a few months later (Perception & Psychophysics, 1992), with the patient variant for Nature close on its heels. Lesson learned then – always pay attention when Jon speaks. The rewards have been great.’’ Rich Ivry
‘‘I first met Jon in the late 1980s when, like him, I was working in the field of visual cognition. We were both visiting speakers at UCSD, with talks scheduled on consecutive days with titles that turned out to be something like ‘‘Evidence that ‘object-centered’ neglect is actually spatial’’ (my talk, on the first day) and ‘‘Evidence that neglect is object-centered’’ (his title, second day). He arrived after my talk but I was at his and of course the audience was also there for both.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
and conclusive results to address the most significant problems in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It sounds easy, but how can one do it? It’s ART; Jon’s ART. Generations of students have learnt and will continue learning from it. [. . .]’’ Sabine Kastner
‘‘Everybody who knew Jon knew the stunning, sometimes unsettling, speed of his turbocharged mind. I wonder how many other collaborators, like me, found themselves a little reluctant to email an idea for an experiment, knowing that within five minutes would come back a reply with all the problems of the original idea, a few more ideas that were a good bit better, and some extra theoretical development as an afterthought. What I also learned through working with Jon, though, was that he deserved his successes not just for the clarity of conception that went into the experiments but for the painstaking insistence on making everything as perfect as it could be. [. . .]’’ John Duncan
He was as brilliant back then as ever, while also exuding a certain youthful self-confidence, so everyone expected discord. Instead he engaged with his intellect and not at all with his ego, and we had a fabulous rollicking discussion! He had the ability to focus on the scientific question and think so incisively and creatively about it without personal negativity. It was that combination of intellectual brilliance and genuine love for the science that made him such a fount of inspiration to us all.’’
‘‘[. . .] There are many stories about Jon’s brilliance. One I recall reflected his talent as a writer, something I have always found hard going, to say the least. I arrived at his office to arrange an evening out. He told me he was just starting a paper, as I could see from the first sentences under the heading ‘Introduction’; a three-experiment study, to be about a 15- to 20-page manuscript. I returned about three or four hours later for him to request just another ten minutes, so he could submit it then. No re-writes, cutting and pasting or second thoughts for Jon; close to perfect in one go. [. . .]’’
Martha J. Farah
Steven P. Tipper
‘‘I first met Jon in the early 1990s when I had just moved to the UK and he moved to Cambridge. We had been emailing for a couple of years about selective attention, perceptual grouping and negative priming. He invited me to visit Cambridge and I hopped on a train expecting to meet a distinguished Cambridge Don who, given his already stunning body of work, was bound to be far older than me! Instead, I was confronted by the handsome, young Jon, ultra cool in his T-shirt and leather jacket. Within about five minutes he had resolved the problem with a complex pattern of results I had been struggling with for months – really! [. . .]’’
‘‘[. . .] He was a lovely man and a true cognitive psychologist. He retained the old fashioned virtues of a British experimentalist (meticulous design, data analysis and interpretation) but he also wholeheartedly embraced the new technologies of brain imaging and TMS. As a result, he improved our work and indeed the work of all his collaborators and colleagues. He was also seriously playful and was equally pleased to talk about bass guitar styles as about attention. His death is a terrible loss to cognitive neuroscience, since, as he said himself in a recent interview, the best was yet to come.’’ Uta and Chris Frith
Elaine Fox
‘‘[. . .] Jon’s work had an important impact on me early on. He had an amazing ability to design simple and straightforward experiments that would reveal incisive 190
‘‘Jon Driver was a stunningly talented scientist and probably the most brilliant experimentalist I have ever known. He had an incredibly sharp intuition for the key theoretical issues and the decisive
Obituary experiments to address them; and the ability to construct experimental designs of rigour and, often, real beauty. His experimental work was relentlessly innovative on just about every dimension. One had the sense that, rather than making marginal adjustments to existing paradigms, Jon was able to create just what was needed from first principles, albeit informed by a vast knowledge of prior work. His work will stand as a paradigmatic example of what can be achieved, for anyone interested in the experimental study of the mind and brain. [. . .]’’ His work and influence will continue to shape our field for many decades; and I believe that he will be
Trends in Cognitive Sciences April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
remembered, by present and future generations, as one of the most remarkable investigators into the mind and brain that Britain has ever produced.’’ Nick Chater
Acknowledgments We are grateful to all contributors for granting us permission to reproduce (parts of) their posts from http://jondriver1962-2011.blogspot.com/ in the present form.
1364-6613/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.02.006 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
191
Jon Driver (1962-2011) Raymond J. Dolan1, Stavroula Kousta2 and Geraint Rees1,3 1
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK 2 Editor, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK
Jon Driver, one of the world’s leading cognitive neuroscientists and a member of the TiCS Advisory Editorial Board, died on 28 November 2011 at the age of 49. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Jon attended Hymers College in Hull, where the family moved. He read experimental psychology at Queen’s College, Oxford, and graduated with a first class degree in 1984. He obtained a DPhil from Oxford University in 1988, under the supervision of Alan Allport and Peter McLeod. After spending some time at the University of Oregon as a visiting assistant professor, he returned to the United Kingdom to take up a lectureship at the University of Cambridge. He moved to Birkbeck College in the late 1990s and then to University College London, where he became Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2004. At the time of his death, he held a Royal Society Anniversary Research Professorship. Jon carried out pioneering work in attention, multisensory integration and spatial cognition, authoring more than 240 scientific articles. His work combined innovative thinking, experimental rigor and a trademark meticulous attention to detail, and his scientific contributions were acknowledged in his election as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2005) and Fellow of the British Academy (2008). Jon had been a member of the TiCS Editorial Board since the early days of the journal’s existence. His insightful advice, enthusiastic engagement with the journal and unfaltering support helped shape both the content and identity of TiCS over the years. His sharp intellect and avuncular style earned him the respect of colleagues and students alike. In the quotes that follow, colleagues and friends recount the numerous ways in which his work and personality impacted on those who worked closely with him, as well as on the field of cognitive neuroscience. For more contributions, please visit the blog created to celebrate his memory (http://jondriver19622011.blogspot.com/). ‘‘Conversations with Jon – about science or practically anything – were some of the best, the liveliest, the most enriching I have had in all my long life. He was so sharp, so zestfully open-minded, so serious – and yet so playful. [. . .] Corresponding authors: Dolan, R.J. ([email protected]); Kousta, S. ([email protected]); Rees, G. ([email protected]).
As an undergraduate, it was obvious already he was a superstar. But instead of going on immediately to do a PhD, Jon opted to spend a year as a research assistant (with Peter McLeod and me), to give himself time to figure out what line of research he really wanted to pursue. This deep humility and thoughtfulness, and deep commitment to ‘getting it right’ and getting to the truth, were the hallmark of everything Jon did. After that year, once launched on a PhD, he completed it at lightning speed and with the absolute minimum of supervision from me (just lots of those hugely enjoyable, wide-ranging conversations!). And of course, from then on I just watched him fly. [. . .]’’ Alan Allport
‘‘I knew him through his sister when we were all at school in Hull – and later at Oxford. He played the bass in a local band, The London Boys – Stax/Motown covers and their own songs in a similar style. You can find one of their songs on YouTube if you look hard enough. Jon was a sharp dresser, one of the few guys able to make white jeans look cool. In fact, he was a cool guy all round – very clever, funny and kind.’’ John Pullman
‘‘I met Jon shortly after he arrived in the States to work with Mike Posner and Steve Keele as Oregon’s first McDonnell-Pew Scholar. I was in my first year at UC Santa Barbara and Jon and Gordon Baylis came up from San Diego to visit my lab. I don’t remember much of our conversation that day nor of the dinner that evening. But what does stand out is what happened after dinner. Jon and Gordon looked a bit impish and asked if they might borrow the keys to my lab. Seems that they had been kicking around an idea and wanted to go back to the lab and see if they could program something up (in our pre-laptop days). Off they went, me, regretfully, feeling obliged to stay at home with my wife and our young son. Jon and Gordon never made it back to the house. They ended up working all night, playing with one display after another, and had the experiment sorted out by morning. Jon laid out the experimental plan 189
Obituary when I came in the next day and, in a pattern to be repeated over the years, I struggled to follow, either because I couldn’t quite match the Mach 3 speed of his mind or make heads or tails of the mumbled British accent. With patience, Jon made the elegance of the study clear. If memory serves me right, the manuscript – with eight experiments – was ready just a few months later (Perception & Psychophysics, 1992), with the patient variant for Nature close on its heels. Lesson learned then – always pay attention when Jon speaks. The rewards have been great.’’ Rich Ivry
‘‘I first met Jon in the late 1980s when, like him, I was working in the field of visual cognition. We were both visiting speakers at UCSD, with talks scheduled on consecutive days with titles that turned out to be something like ‘‘Evidence that ‘object-centered’ neglect is actually spatial’’ (my talk, on the first day) and ‘‘Evidence that neglect is object-centered’’ (his title, second day). He arrived after my talk but I was at his and of course the audience was also there for both.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
and conclusive results to address the most significant problems in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It sounds easy, but how can one do it? It’s ART; Jon’s ART. Generations of students have learnt and will continue learning from it. [. . .]’’ Sabine Kastner
‘‘Everybody who knew Jon knew the stunning, sometimes unsettling, speed of his turbocharged mind. I wonder how many other collaborators, like me, found themselves a little reluctant to email an idea for an experiment, knowing that within five minutes would come back a reply with all the problems of the original idea, a few more ideas that were a good bit better, and some extra theoretical development as an afterthought. What I also learned through working with Jon, though, was that he deserved his successes not just for the clarity of conception that went into the experiments but for the painstaking insistence on making everything as perfect as it could be. [. . .]’’ John Duncan
He was as brilliant back then as ever, while also exuding a certain youthful self-confidence, so everyone expected discord. Instead he engaged with his intellect and not at all with his ego, and we had a fabulous rollicking discussion! He had the ability to focus on the scientific question and think so incisively and creatively about it without personal negativity. It was that combination of intellectual brilliance and genuine love for the science that made him such a fount of inspiration to us all.’’
‘‘[. . .] There are many stories about Jon’s brilliance. One I recall reflected his talent as a writer, something I have always found hard going, to say the least. I arrived at his office to arrange an evening out. He told me he was just starting a paper, as I could see from the first sentences under the heading ‘Introduction’; a three-experiment study, to be about a 15- to 20-page manuscript. I returned about three or four hours later for him to request just another ten minutes, so he could submit it then. No re-writes, cutting and pasting or second thoughts for Jon; close to perfect in one go. [. . .]’’
Martha J. Farah
Steven P. Tipper
‘‘I first met Jon in the early 1990s when I had just moved to the UK and he moved to Cambridge. We had been emailing for a couple of years about selective attention, perceptual grouping and negative priming. He invited me to visit Cambridge and I hopped on a train expecting to meet a distinguished Cambridge Don who, given his already stunning body of work, was bound to be far older than me! Instead, I was confronted by the handsome, young Jon, ultra cool in his T-shirt and leather jacket. Within about five minutes he had resolved the problem with a complex pattern of results I had been struggling with for months – really! [. . .]’’
‘‘[. . .] He was a lovely man and a true cognitive psychologist. He retained the old fashioned virtues of a British experimentalist (meticulous design, data analysis and interpretation) but he also wholeheartedly embraced the new technologies of brain imaging and TMS. As a result, he improved our work and indeed the work of all his collaborators and colleagues. He was also seriously playful and was equally pleased to talk about bass guitar styles as about attention. His death is a terrible loss to cognitive neuroscience, since, as he said himself in a recent interview, the best was yet to come.’’ Uta and Chris Frith
Elaine Fox
‘‘[. . .] Jon’s work had an important impact on me early on. He had an amazing ability to design simple and straightforward experiments that would reveal incisive 190
‘‘Jon Driver was a stunningly talented scientist and probably the most brilliant experimentalist I have ever known. He had an incredibly sharp intuition for the key theoretical issues and the decisive
Obituary experiments to address them; and the ability to construct experimental designs of rigour and, often, real beauty. His experimental work was relentlessly innovative on just about every dimension. One had the sense that, rather than making marginal adjustments to existing paradigms, Jon was able to create just what was needed from first principles, albeit informed by a vast knowledge of prior work. His work will stand as a paradigmatic example of what can be achieved, for anyone interested in the experimental study of the mind and brain. [. . .]’’ His work and influence will continue to shape our field for many decades; and I believe that he will be
Trends in Cognitive Sciences April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
remembered, by present and future generations, as one of the most remarkable investigators into the mind and brain that Britain has ever produced.’’ Nick Chater
Acknowledgments We are grateful to all contributors for granting us permission to reproduce (parts of) their posts from http://jondriver1962-2011.blogspot.com/ in the present form.
1364-6613/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.02.006 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, April 2012, Vol. 16, No. 4
191