Charlie Gross is a maverick of modern neuroscience. Never content to tread the straight and worn path, never bridled by accepted views and traditional approaches, Charlie has often veered off the tracks, mapped much new terrain, and repeatedly opened our eyes to new ways of thinking. His scientific contributions are prodigious, transformative, and sometimes—as in his discovery of “face cells” in the cerebral cortex—the stuff of legend.1
Charlie is also deeply loved by the generations of students and colleagues with whom he has worked. We love Charlie for his wit and wisdom; for the passionate joie de vivre that fills his personal and professional spheres; for the devotion he extends to his students, their work, and their lives; for a certain (often bizarre) unaffected goofiness and unpredictability; and for those seemingly stray provocative comments that tilt the frame of your world.
On May 25 and 26, 2013, a great...