number could be expressed as the sum of at most four squared numbers. It was his strongly held opinion that metaphysical speculation was both foreign and inimical to the conduct of mathematics and science. His work in the calculus of variations led to the development of a system of algebraic manipulations seeking the value of constants, Lagrange multipliers, in place of solving Euler’s differential equations. It makes it possible to immediately write down a computable expression for the maximum of a mathematical equation. The technique is now routinely taught to high school students and with no mention of the role of belief in the perfection of God in its discovery. | was a fortunate freshman medical student. After a visit to his office and a stimulating discussion about some of the correspondences between the ideas of psychoanalysis and neurobiology, Robert Heath, Tulane Medical School’s Gary Cooper-like charismatic chairman of the psychiatry department, offered me a place in his animal and human neurophysiological laboratory. Between classes, evenings and weekends, | used a Horsely-Clarke apparatus, one of the world’s first stereotaxic devices. It allowed the precise placement of electrodes into functionally specific regions of a cat’s brain. The electrodes were cemented to the skull in place and their wires connected to a device by which the frequency, amplitude and wave shape of the electrical stimulation could be oscilloscopically monitored and electronically controlled as the conscious cat walked around the room. | spent hours observing and recording changes in spontaneous behavior that followed activation of various nuclei in the cat’s brain with small electrical currents. Deep in the part of brain that resides in the upper neck, called the lower brain stem, the region thought to regulate functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, gastrointestinal motility and global states of consciousness such as wakefulness and sleep, | found stimulus sites