John C. Lilly
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| Dr. John Lilly | |
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| Born | January 6, 1915 Saint Paul, Minnesota U.S. |
| Died | September 30, 2001 (aged 86) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | |
Dr John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001) was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor.
He was a researcher of the nature of consciousness using mainly isolation tanks,[1] dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination.
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[hide]Early life and education[edit]
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Lilly was born to a wealthy family on January 6, 1915, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His father was Richard Coyle Lilly, president of the First National Bank of St. Paul. His mother was Rachel Lenor Cunningham, whose family owned the Cunningham & Haas Company, a large stockyards company in St. Paul. Lilly had an older brother, Richard Lilly Jr., and a younger brother, David Maher Lilly. A fourth child, Mary Catherine Lilly, died in infancy.
Lilly showed an interest in science at an early age. At thirteen years old, he was an avid chemistry hobbyist, supplementing his makeshift basement laboratory with chemicals given to him by a pharmacist friend. Students at his parochial Catholic grade school called him "Einstein Jr."[2] At age 14 he enrolled at St. Paul Academy, a college preparatory academy for boys, where his teachers encouraged him to pursue science further and conduct his experiments in the school laboratory after hours.
While at SPA, Lilly also further developed his interest in philosophy. He studied the works of many of the great philosophers, finding himself especially attracted to the subjective idealism of Anglo-Irish theologian and philosopher George Berkeley.
Despite his father's wish that he go to an eastern Ivy League university to become a banker, Lilly accepted a scholarship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, to study science. He enrolled in 1933 and studied physics under such notable scientists as Robert Andrews Millikan, Paul Dirac, and Carl David Anderson. Lilly was a member of Blacker House.[3] After his first year, Caltech learned that Lilly was from a wealthy family and cancelled his scholarship, forcing him to go to his father for help. Dick Lilly set up a trust fund to pay the tuition and eventually became a benefactor of the college. Lilly continued to draw on his family wealth to fund his scientific pursuits throughout his life.
In 1934, Lilly read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The pharmacological control methods of Huxley's dystopia and the links between physical chemical processes of the brain and subjective experiences of the mind helped inspire Lilly to give up his study of physics and pursue biology, eventually focusing on neurophysiology.
Lilly was engaged to Mary Crouch at the beginning of his junior year at Caltech. Months before their wedding, he took a job with a lumber company in the Northwest to soothe a bout of "nervous exhaustion" brought on by the pressures of academia and his upcoming marriage. During this sabbatical he was hospitalised after injuring his foot with an axe while cutting brush. His time in the trauma ward inspired him to become a doctor of medicine.[2]
In 1937, while Lilly was looking for a good medical school, his wealthy and well-connected father arranged a meeting between Lilly and Charles Horace Mayo of the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Following Mayo's advice, Lilly applied and was accepted to Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he became good friends with Mayo's son, Charles William Mayo. Lilly graduated from Caltech with a Bachelor of Science degree on June 10, 1938, and enrolled at Dartmouth the following September.
At Dartmouth, Lilly launched into the study of anatomy, performing dissections on 32 cadavers during his time there. He once stretched out an entire intestinal tract across the length of a room to determine its actual length with certainty.
During the summer after his first year at Dartmouth, Lilly returned to Pasadena to participate in an experiment with his former Caltech biochemistry professor Henry Borsook. The purpose of the experiment was to study the creation of glycocyamine, a major source of muscle power in the human body. The experiment involved putting Lilly on a completely protein-free diet while administering measured doses of glycine and arginine, the two amino acids that Borsook hypothesized were involved in the creation of glycocyamine. The experiments pushed Lilly to extreme physical and mental limits; he became increasingly weak and delirious as the weeks went on. The results of the experiment confirmed Borsook's hypothesis and Lilly's name was included among the authors, making it the first published research paper of his career. It was also one of the first instances of a lifelong pattern of experimenting on his own body to the point of endangering his health.
After two years at Dartmouth, Lilly decided that he wanted to pursue a career in medical research, rather than therapeutic practice as was standard for Dartmouth medical students at that time. He decided to transfer to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvaniawhich would provide him with better opportunities for conducting research.
At the University of Pennsylvania, Lilly met Professor H. Cuthbert Bazett, a protege of British physiologist J. B. S. Haldane. Bazett introduced Lilly to Haldane's view that scientists should never conduct an experiment or procedure on another person that they have not first conducted on themselves, a view Lilly embraced and attempted to exemplify throughout his career. Bazett took a liking to the young, enthusiastic graduate student, and set Lilly up with his own research laboratory. While working under Bazett, Lilly created his first invention, the electrical capacitance diaphragm manometer, a device for measuring blood pressure. While designing the instrument, he received electrical engineering advice from biophysics pioneer Britton Chance. Chance also introduced Lilly to the world of computers, which was still in its infancy.
While finishing his degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Lilly enrolled in a class entitled "How to Build an Atomic Bomb". He and several other students transcribed their notes from the class into a book with the same title. The director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, attempted to suppress publication of the book, but was unable to because no classified data was used in writing the book.
Lilly graduated with a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942.
Career overview[edit]
Lilly was a physician and psychoanalyst. He made contributions in the fields of biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, computer science, and neuroanatomy. He invented and promoted the use of an isolation tank as a means of sensory deprivation.[4] He also attempted communication between humans and dolphins.[5] His work helped the creation of the United States Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
Lilly's eclectic career began as a conventional scientist doing research for universities and government. Gradually, however, he began researching unconventional topics. He published several books and had two Hollywood movies based partly on his work. He also developed theories for flotation.
Lilly published 19 books, including The Center of the Cyclone, which describes his own LSD experiences, and Man and Dolphin and The Mind of the Dolphin, which describe his work with dolphins.
In the 1980s Lilly directed a project that attempted to teach dolphins a computer-synthesised language. Lilly designed a future "communications laboratory" that would be a floating living room where humans and dolphins could chat as equals and develop a common language.
Lilly envisioned a time when all killing of whales and dolphins would cease, "not from a law being passed, but from each human understanding innately that these are ancient, sentient earth residents, with tremendous intelligence and enormous life force. Not someone to kill, but someone to learn from."[6] In the 1990s Lilly moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he lived most of the remainder of his life.
Lilly's literary rights and scientific discoveries were owned by Human Software, Inc., while his philanthropic endeavors were owned by the Human Dolphin Foundation. The John C. Lilly Research Institute, Inc. continues to research topics of interest to Lilly and carry on his legacy.
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