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Charles M. Fair

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Charles Maitland Fair
Born(1916-09-18)September 18, 1916
DiedJuly 28, 2014(2014-07-28) (aged 97)
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Neuroscience researcher and writer
Parents

Charles Maitland Fair (September 18, 1916 – July 28, 2014) was an American neuroscience researcher and writer.

Early life and education

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Fair was born in New York City. His mother was the stage actress Gertrude Bryan. He attended the Buckley School, Fay School, and St. Paul's.[1] Fair attended Yale University but was asked to leave before graduating.[2]

Career

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Fair began to study the nervous system in the late 1950s out of his conviction that psychiatric theories of the self had failed.[2] In spite of his lack of a college degree, Fair distinguished himself as an independent scholar by holding several prestigious positions and writing three books on neuroscience. He was a Guggenheim Fellow at UCLA's Brain Research Institute[3] and worked as a scientist for MIT's Neuroscience Research Program and Massachusetts General Hospital.[4][5] Fair published several technical papers[6][7] and contributed to the academic journals Science[8] and Nature.[9]

Writing

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Fair wrote poetry, literary commentary, and screenplays.[2] He published light verse in Punch and The New Yorker, wrote book reviews for the Providence Journal and the Washington Post, and had a column in the American Poetry Review.[4] Fair wrote and narrated the soundtrack for the original Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.[4] He wrote three non-technical books on the subjects of the history of war (From the Jaws of Victory) and cultural criticism (The Dying Self; The New Nonsense: The End of the Rational Consensus).

Skepticism

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Fair was a skeptic and early member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[10] Fair's The New Nonsense critically examined pseudoscience and paranormal topics such as mind control, ESP, UFOs, and Velikovsky's cataclysm theory.[2][11][12] He pleaded for "rational renaissance" and praised reason as a guard against looming fascistic revolution and cultural decay.[12]

Personal life

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Fair had a diverse range of occupations and interests. He worked as a jazz pianist, banana importer, computer company executive, editor, poet, writer, neuroscientist, and historian.[5] He enjoyed sailing and played the vibraphone.[2] "By doing a great many things and failing at half of them I found out who I really am, and something about what the world is really like," said Fair of his own life.[2]

Publications

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  • The Physical Foundations of the Psyche (1963)
  • The Dying Self (1969)
  • From the Jaws of Victory (1971)
  • The New Nonsense: The End of the Rational Consensus (1974)
  • Memory & Central Nervous Organization (1988)
  • Cortical Memory Functions (1992)

References

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  1. ^ "Avis de décès de CHARLES FAIR". legacy.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Haines, John (12 April 1975). "Charles Fair, A Man of Many Talents". The Missoulian.
  3. ^ "Guggenheim Fellows". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 28 April 2021. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
  4. ^ a b c "Obituaries: Charles M. Fair". The Post Star. 29 July 2014. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  5. ^ a b "Deaths: Charles M. Fair". The New York Times. 31 July 2014.
  6. ^ Fair, Charles M. (1989). "A method of estimating the total number of words in English". Language Sciences. 11 (4): 355–366. doi:10.1016/0388-0001(89)90026-0. ISSN 0388-0001.
  7. ^ ASCD Yearbook Committee (1977). Feeling, valuing, and the art of growing : insights into the affective. Louise M. Berman, Jessie A. Roderick, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Washington, D.C.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ISBN 0-87120-082-1. OCLC 2984748.
  8. ^ Fair, Charles (18 December 1987). "Monoclonal Antibodies as Phylogenetic Labels". Science. 238 (4834): 1730–1731. Bibcode:1987Sci...238.1730F. doi:10.1126/science.3686014. PMID 3686014.
  9. ^ Fair, Charles (27 July 1989). "Room for Theory?". Nature. 340 (6231): 260. Bibcode:1989Natur.340..260F. doi:10.1038/340260d0. PMID 2747792. S2CID 2732044.
  10. ^ Binga, Timothy (9 November 2016). "In-Memoriam Segment from CSICon 2016". Skeptical Inquirer. Archived from the original on 15 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  11. ^ Fair, Charles M. (1974). The new nonsense; the end of the rational consensus. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21822-0. OCLC 898053.
  12. ^ a b "Reviews: The New Nonsense: The End of the Rational Consensus". Kirkus. Archived from the original on 14 May 2021 – via Kirkus Media.
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