Dear Vision Science community, we are saddened to announce the passing of Jennifer S. Lund on July 18th, 2025, at the age of 84 in Astoria
by paolo (comments: 0)
Dear Vision Science community, we are saddened to announce the passing of Jennifer S. Lund on July 18th, 2025, at the age of 84 in Astoria (Oregon).
Jenny was among the most influential neuroanatomists of the 20th century, who dedicated her career to understanding the circuitry of the visual cortex and how it relates to cortical function.
Born in Birmingham (UK) from artist parents, she received her PhD in Neuroscience from University College London in 1966, where she studied split-brain monkeys in the lab of Jack Downers.
After postdoctoral positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, she was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Washington.
There she began her studies of the primate visual cortex, which remained the focus of her research for the rest of her career. In 1983, she became Professor and Director of Ophthalmology Research in the Medical University of South Carolina, and in 1987 moved to the University of Pittsburgh where she co-founded the Center for Neuroscience, becoming its Director.
Jenny subsequently held professorship positions at UCL and finally the University of Utah, where she became an Emeritus Professor in 2005.
In 1992 Jenny was awarded the Cajal Club Kreig Cortical Discoverer Award and was made Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She was a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
She served as chair of the program committee, and Treasurerfor the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), and as the Executive Secretary and later Secretary-General for the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO).
Her seminal work in the 70’s with the Golgi technique and later with the introduction of novel retrograde neuroanatomical tracers, provided the first schematics of functional microcircuits in the macaque primary visual cortex (V1).
At a time when neurophysiologists emphasized functional homogeneity within the cortical column, Jenny’s painstaking analysis of dendritic and axonal morphology, and of cortical connections in visual cortex directed attention to cortical lamination as a critical factor in the organization of input/output relations.
Among her many discoveries, was that V1 projections to the LGN arise from neurons in layer 6, while those to the superior colliculus and pulvinar nucleus arise from layer 5. She was a visionary. Today, 50 years later, with the advent of viral technology and optogenetics, understanding the connectivity and function of cortical layers has become its own distinct field of research.
Perhaps Jenny’s greatest contribution was the discovery in 1982 that cortical columns, long thought to operate independently in their processing of information from restricted regions of visual space, were actually linked into a cooperative network by a system of long range horizontal connections. Further studies from her laboratory as well as others would reveal the functional specificity of these connections (linking neurons with similar response properties) and their role in shaping the visual responses of cortical neurons.
Jenny was one of the first neuroscientists to recognize the importance of collaborations between theoreticians and experimentalists.
At a time when many biologists were ignoring the modeling community, Jenny actively sought such interactions; her ideas were the catalyst for a wealth of biologically-based models of early vision.
Jenny’s impact on the field is also evident in the supportive environment that she created for students, postdocs and collaborators, many of whom came from diverse backgrounds that complemented her anatomical expertise.
She encouraged and enabled these younger scientists to explore what they were passionate about in her lab, without taking any credit for work that involved techniques that were outside her expertise.
She played a pivotal role in the careers of several impactful visual neuroscientists including Ron Boothe, Kathy Rockland, David Fitzpatrick, Gary Blasdel, Lynne Kiorpes, Jonathan Levitt, and Alessandra Angelucci, whose work to this day reflects the profound influence of her thinking in understanding structure-function relationship in the visual cortex and beyond.
Jenny also played a pivotal role in mentoring and actively promoting the career of women in science. Many of thembenefited from Jenny’s gracious, charming and unselfish manner in guiding not only her own students and postdocs, but other young scientists with whom she came in contact.
To these women scientists, Jenny provided continual encouragement, inspiration, unselfish scientific support and, often, scientific ideas.
She also constantly ensured that her female students/post-docs received equal opportunities, rights and deserved recognition.
Jenny’s personality had a unique combination of intelligence, kindness and integrity, combined with firm values, which she fiercely but graciously defended.
All of us who had the fortune of working with her were touched and influenced by her sincerity, her love of discovery, her excitement for the next generation of scientists, and the new technologies that they were bringing to the questions.
Jenny loved to engage in discussions about novel findings generated by new technologies, their strengths and weaknesses, alternative interpretations, and especially enjoyed putting them in the context of her exceptional understanding of cortical circuit organization.
Her autobiography was included in the “History of Neuroscience in Autobiography”, published by the Society for Neuroscience (Larry R. Squire, ed.) to celebrate, at the end of the past millennium, the pioneers of neuroscience. It is fun reading, and a reminder of Jenny’s fine British sense of humor, which those who knew her will certainly enjoy.
There is no question that our views of cortical circuitry have changed substantially over the last 50 years, and that Jenny’s contributions have played a critical role in this process.
Her work continues to serve as the guiding force for the application of new methods for visualizing the structure and functions of cortical circuits.
Jenny leaves her husband of 62 years Ray Lund, himself a prominent vision scientist, her two sons Ben and Simon, her two grandchildren Myles and Zane, her great-grand-daughter Marcelina, and many mentees.
To share our memories of our dear mentor and friend we have created an online blog page (https://jenny-lund.blogspot.com/).
If you would like to share a thought, memory, or send condolences to her family, please email one of us (emails are on the blog) and we can post it for you.
We will also follow with a tribute to Jenny Lund’s work to be published in a scientific journal.
Alessandra Angelucci (University of Utah)
Jonathan Levitt (CUNY)
David Fitzpatrick (Max Planck Florida)