Gerald Edelman (1929-2014), American immunologist. Edelmen is best known for his work in the 1960s that lead to the discovery of the chemical structure of antibodies. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with the British biochemist Rodney Porter (1917-1985) for this work. His later work focused on neuroscience and a biological theory of consciousness. He theorised that neurones were acted upon by a type of natural selection, which he called neural Darwinism, driven by perception.