Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Another Famous New Mexican Who Isn’t Famous in NM

David Eagleman got a ten minute (or so) segment tonight on the Nova program on public television.
Eagleton is from Albuquerque. Wikipedia introduces Eagleman this way. “David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He is best known for his work on time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw. He is also an internationally bestselling fiction writer published in 22 languages.”
Eagleman must never sleep. He does too much to sleep. That’s OK, high achievers seldom sleep. The fiction writer part derives from Eagleman majoring in literature at Rice, where he got bachelor’s degree in 1993.
Has anyone in Albuquerque other than his parents and his Academy classmates ever heard of him?
Not likely. We spend so much time whining about our (intellectual and economic) poverty that we forget our excellence.
Not to rave much more about Eagleman, who appears to be amazing, but he is the youngest board member of the Long Now Foundation. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation.)
The relevance here is that Long Now was founded by Stewart Brand, who has a New Mexico connection as a former Santa Fe Institute board member and friend (I think that’s the correct word) of passive-solar pioneer Steve Baer of Zomeworks Corporation and of Steve Durkee (whose Muslim name I forget), a co-founder of the Lama Foundation near San Cristobal.

(Two commentators point out that in the original post I confused Eagleman with Eagleton, who I think was George McGovern's original running mate when McGovern ran for president. I appreciate the oversight.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There seems to be a typo in your blog...his name is Eagleman, not Eagleton. :)

Anonymous said...

I very much enjoyed learning about New Mexican Dr. Eagleman in this fascinating post. However, it should be pointed out that you've misspelled his name throughout the entire thing. It's Eagleman, not Eagleton.