Gerald Westheimer

Gerald Westheimer
Gerald Westheimer about 1970
Born	(1924-05-13)May 13, 1924 Berlin, Germany
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Scientist
Organization	University of California, Berkeley

Gerald Westheimer AM FRS (born 13 May 1924) is an Australian scientist at University of California, Berkeley researching the eye, its optics, and how we see details in space and in three dimensions.

Westheimer was born on 13 May 1924 in Berlin into an observant Jewish family—long settled in Germany and traced back at least to Schutzjude Joseph Aaron Westheimer born in 1768 in Menzingen, Baden. He is the younger of two sons. In 1938, state-sanctioned attacks against Jews in Nazi Germany prompted the family to emigrate to Australia, settling in Sydney.

Shortly after arriving in Sydney, Westheimer completed high-school by self-study and enrolled in the professional Optometry program at the Sydney Technical College, from which he graduated with honors and the College Medal in 1943. While practicing optometry he pursued further study, leading to a B.Sc. in mathematics and physiology from Sydney University and submission of a thesis for the Fellowship of the Sydney Technical College.

In 1951, Westheimer went to the US, first as a graduate student at Ohio State University (Ph.D., Physics-Physiological Optics) with Glenn A. Fry and then in various professorial ranks in optometry schools of the University of Houston, Ohio State and University of California, Berkeley, interrupted by post-doctoral studies at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and at the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. In 1960, he was appointed as an associate professor at the School of Optometry at Berkeley, becoming professor in 1963. In 1967, he joined Berkeley's Department of Physiology-Anatomy, later merged into the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, in which he established and headed the Division of Neurobiology until becoming professor in the Graduate School in 1994. Since 1994 he has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Rockefeller University in New York.