Alexander Forbes (May 14, 1882 – March 27, 1965) was an American electrophysiologist, neurophysiologist, and professor of physiology at Harvard Medical School. He "had an enormous impact on the physiology and neuroscience of the twentieth century."
Contents
Early life
Born into the Boston Brahmin upper class Forbes family, Alexander Forbes's father was William Hathaway Forbes and his mother was Edith Emerson Forbes, the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. From 1889 to 1899 Alexander Forbes attended Milton Academy. There he particularly liked the physics and advanced Greek taught by James Hattrick Lee. For the academic year 1899–1900, Forbes did not pursue formal education but spent time on the Forbes family's Wyoming cattle ranch, camped in the Bighorn Mountains, worked briefly in a Maine electro-chemical mill, and traveled in the Pacific Coast states until the beginning of summer 1900; during that summer he visited "Switzerland, France, Holland, England, and Scotland."