UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #566
WELKER, WALLY L.

WELKER, Wally L. (1926-2007)
Instructor, Physiology; Professor, Neurophysiology
At UW: 1952; 1954-1990

Interviewed: 2001		
Interviewer: Barry Teicher
Length: 4 hours, 26 minutes

Wally Welker talks about his childhood on the family farm, and his early interest in nature. He talks about his military service in the Philippines, and how it impacted his decision to attend American University. He discusses his transfer to the psychology department at University of Chicago and summer school at UW. He talks about his research on novel object attraction and habituation with chimpanzees, the neurophysiology research group at UW, the relationship between neurophysiology and physiology. He describes Clinton Woolsey. He talks about his experiences in neurosurgery, and mapping sensory receptor surfaces onto the cerebral cortex. He talks about his work with Joseph E. Hind, William Rhode, Robert Benjamin, John Barnard, Konrad Akert, and Jerzy E. Rose. He describes his collection of brain casts.

Keywords: neurosurgery, neurophysiology, chimpanzees, racoons, physiology, Clinton Woolsey.

First Interview Session (June 12, 2001): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:13	Question: Could you give us some information about your childhood and early schooling? Answer: Wally Welker talks about his childhood in Darien Center, New York where he worked on his family’s farm. He mentions his love for observing plants and animals with his brother.

00:04:52	No question: WW describes the process of tapping and draining maple sap from trees.  

00:08:11	Question: When did you start getting interested in studying the environment? Answer: He recalls how he first became interested in learning about the environment by lying in a forest and observing his surroundings.

00:10:15	Question: What about your schooling at this point? Answer: WW says it was only later that he became interested in learning from books.  He describes some of his experiences with clubs and organizations during his sophomore year of high school.  He says that his non-judgmental attitudes made him popular with his classmates. 

00:13:10	Question: Did you have any teachers in particular who directed you towards your area? Answer: WW mentions several influential teachers, including a chemistry teacher whose experiments provoked his interest in chemistry.

00:16:09	Question: What about your parents, what's the highest grade level they had attained? Answer: He describes his parents.  WW explains that he and his father shared some similarities.  His mother attended a normal school, taught in a country school for several years, and retired after she had children.  His family was musically inclined.

00:20:21	Question: Did you expect in high school to continue into college? Answer: After his junior year of high school, WW realized he wanted to attend college.  He began to read extensively and to work for good grades.  He talks about some of the classes he took in high school.  By the end of high school he had decided that he wanted a career in research.

00:24:25	No question: WW talks about writing “The Weekly Foo,” a comic strip in a Buffalo newspaper.

00:26:26:37	Question: How did the war impact on you after you left high school? Answer: WW describes his impressions of World War II while he was in high school.  He says he got caught up in the propaganda and decided to enlist in the army.  He recalls his father’s role in World War I.

00:30:44	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:49	Question: Did you enlist after high school? Answer: WW talks about his decision to attend West Point after high school.  He explains how candidates were ranked as principals, first alternates or second alternates.  After basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, he took several chemistry courses at Cornell University while he waited to learn if he had been accepted into West Point.

00:34:02	No question: He attended Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia after being denied entry to West Point.
 	
00:35:18	Question: After you went Fort Benning, you went to Fort Ord? Answer: After he obtained his second lieutenancy, he was shipped to Fort Ord, California to prepare for a station in the Philippines. The men from Infantry School were shipped to the Philippines from San Francisco.  He mentions his role as second lieutenant on the ship and his landing in Manila Bay.

00:39:11	No question: The job given to WW and his infantry was to train Filipinos to take the place of American soldiers who were returning to the U.S.  He describes the poverty of the Filipinos that he saw while guarding food supplies.  Shortly after arriving in Manila he came across his cousin, who was working as a nurse.  She helped him to get discharged after his father’s death.

00:42:19	Question: So what happened when you returned home? Answer: WW talks about returning to work on the farm with his brother after his father died.  He soon decided that he did not want to farm and that he wanted to attend college instead.  He explains why he decided to attend American University in Washington D.C.

00:45:36	Question: How did you go about picking a college? Answer: WW became interested in psychology and began to earn top marks in his psychology classes.  His psychology professor, Dr. Dalbir Bindra, advised him to transfer to a school such as the University of Chicago.  He hitchhiked to Chicago for an interview and was accepted on the spot.

00:51:43	Question: Tell me a little bit about your additional years at UC. Answer: He describes his years at the University of Chicago.  His wife accompanied him to Chicago, but the marriage ended in divorce.

00:54:23	Question: When you went to graduate school what were you thinking for your graduate courses? Answer: WW discusses graduate school and his interest in clinical psychology, perceptual psychology and psychophysics.  He mentions a study he did on perception and a course he took in neuroanatomy.

00:58:06	No question: He notes that the department at Chicago was experimentally oriented.  He learned that he could hypnotize his brother and make successful post-hypnotic suggestions.  In retrospect he realizes his interests centered on the brain.

01:01:16	End of side.  End of tape.  

Tape 2/Side 1
					
01:01:20	No question: WW talks about his continuing education in psychology.  He mentions Austin Riesen, a primatologist who studied the morphological development of chimpanzees, Robert Yerkes, who had a primatology lab in Orange Park, Florida and K.S. Lashley.

01:04:16	No question: He describes Keith and Cathy Hayes’ experiment, which consisted of trying to teach an infant chimpanzee named Vicki to speak.  WW was hired as their lab assistant for this experiment.

01:05:04	Question: Before you started working with Vicki you went to Wisconsin for a little bit first? Answer: Before he moved to Florida to work on this experiment, WW spent a summer at UW.  He talks about Frank Beach’s work in endocrinology and zoology.  WW took a class with Beach while working in Harry Harlow’s primate laboratory.

01:07:58	Question: Tell me a little bit about Harry Harlow. Answer: WW describes his work with Harlow studying how to tame young monkeys.  His job was to acclimatize a large group of young monkeys to captivity.  In another experiment, WW tried to get monkeys to learn using color.

01:12:20	No question: After the summer at UW came to an end, he went to work with Vicki, the chimpanzee the Hayes’ were trying to teach to speak.  He moved into an apartment above the Hayes’ house.  

01:13:45	No question: In addition to working with Vicki, WW worked in a primate lab a mile and a half away.  K.S. Lashley directed this lab.  Henry Nissen, a major primatologist, took WW under his wing after Riesen returned to Chicago.  WW describes a project he worked on in his free time which involved determining which shapes, textures and sizes were most interesting to chimpanzees.

01:16:55	No question: Although WW did a few simple experiments involving Vicki, it was the experiments in the laboratory that created the data on which he based his dissertation.  He lists the professors who attended his thesis defense.

01:19:29	Question: Tell me about your findings. Answer: WW describes the findings he made while studying the chimps.  His research centered on novel object attraction and habituation.

01:22:27	Question: Did the Hayes succeed? Answer: WW explains that Keith and Cathy Hayes succeeded in teaching Vicki to make guttural noises and lip-smacking, but not to speak.  He mentions other ape studies going on during the Vicki study, including some conducted by Yerkes and K.L. Chow.  Chow removed various portions of monkeys’ brains and studied how they reacted to choice discrimination tests.

01:26:55	No question: After earning his degree, WW was unsure what to do.  Lashley and Nissen suggested he come to UW to work with Clinton Woolsey and Harry Harlow.  WW mentions the summer he spent at a marine laboratory before coming to UW.

01:31:45	End of side.  End of tape.  

Second Interview Session (July 3, 2001): Tapes 3-4

Tape 3/Side 1
			
00:00:15	Question: Let's talk about the department of Neurophysiology. Answer: WW discusses the evolution of the neurophysiology department at the university. Dean William S. Middleton brought Clinton Woolsey to the medical school to establish a research program in neurophysiology.  Woolsey became the Bascom Professor of Neurophysiology and began to recruit researchers and to purchase equipment.

00:03:43	No question: WW describes Woolsey’s comparative study of the brains of mammals, which involved mapping sensory receptor surfaces onto the cerebral cortex.  He found patterns in the placement of vision and audition receptors between different animals.

00:07:39	No question: Woolsey then moved on to chimpanzees. WW explains Woolsey’s team work with a neurosurgeon on an epilepsy treatment. The treatment involved excising portions of the brain that were activated during epileptic seizures.

00:09:15	Question: What caused neurosurgery to become more respected? Answer: WW recalls that neurosurgery became well-respected in the 1940s.  The precise, experimental approach of neurosurgery was considered superior to the earlier method of crudely lopping off parts of the brain to treat psychoses.  Many speculative theories existed at the time about the functions of different parts of the brain, but it was impossible to verify these theories before the advent of neurosurgery.

00:12:51	Question: How did the laboratory fit in with physiology? Answer: WW explains the relationship between the neurophysiology laboratory and the physiology department.  He mentions that tension existed between neurophysiology and physiology faculty because the physiology faculty believed the neurophysiologists ought to share the teaching load.  The neurophysiologists were insulated from departmental politics.

00:17:05	Question: How did you view the controversy surrounding Bowers? Answer: WW mentions the controversy around John Z. Bowers, the dean of the Medical School who succeeded Middleton.  

00:18:19	Question: When you came to the campus in '54, what were the facilities like for neurophysiology? Answer: WW discusses the facilities for neurophysiology when he arrived at UW in 1954.  He explains where sterile surgery took place and how he learned to aspirate a section of an animal’s brain using a suction tube.

00:20:15	Question: How were you trained in surgery? Answer: WW explains that he learned to conduct surgery from Woolsey.  He mentions a raccoon breeding colony from which he obtained raccoons and describes the surgical procedure he followed.  Later in his career he worked on the cerebellum, which was more difficult to work with than the cerebral cortex.  Preparation took many hours, and surgery often lasted into the night or even for several days.

00:26:35	Question: You said sometimes new instruments had to be devised, is that something you constructed? Answer: He describes the facilities of the neurophysiology laboratory after 1960, which allowed space for photography, medical illustration, histology, animal care and preparation, a microelectrode manufacturing room, sterile surgery, a shop for equipment design, and a seminar room.

00:29:30	Question: Did Woolsey design the building by himself or were you all involved? Answer: The laboratory was initially located in the SMI building, but moved in 1960 to the Medical Sciences Building.  There were groups of researchers who studied audition, vision, taste and olfaction, and somatic sensory. 

00:30:58	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2
				
00:31:01	Question: Had Woolsey been aiming for facilities to support the research? Answer: WW continues to list advantages of the lab’s relocation to the Medical Sciences Center in 1960. 

00:31:39	Question: Let's talk a little bit more about Woolsey. Answer: WW discusses Woolsey’s academic background and his penchant for hiring people from different fields.  Woolsey sat on several United Nations committees that were intended to promote contacts between scientists from different countries.

00:34:56	Question: Were there any countries in particular that were getting into neuroscience? Answer: WW mentions a Brazilian scholar who came to Wisconsin and did recording studies of somatic sensory, visual and auditory areas of various animals.  WW discusses other aspects of Woolsey’s international collaborations.

00:38:53	Question: How did Woolsey go about hiring his post-docs? Answer: WW explains how professors around the country sent students to work with Woolsey.  WW trained students from India, Chile, Brazil and Germany.

00:41:12	Question: Define what exactly a research group was under Woolsey. Answer: He describes how research groups operated and how they were intended to promote interdisciplinary work.

00:43:52	No question: WW explains that behavioral studies on animals were becoming common at this time. Audition, the area in which Joseph E. Hind and William Rhode worked, was a very difficult field because of the complexity of the auditory process.

00:48:26	Question: Could you talk about Benjamin and his work? Answer: He describes Robert Benjamin’s background and his research in taste and smell structures in the brain.  WW preferred to study touch and somatic sensory because the receptors were larger and easier to find than those for taste and smell.

00:51:30	Question: When Benjamin is doing his work, is he in touch with people around the United States who are doing similar work? Answer: WW mentions that Woolsey encouraged his laboratory members to attend Physiological Society conferences. Initially there were few people around the world working on neurophysiology, but later specialized societies formed for areas such as audition and vision.

00:54:23	Question: Was Woolsey considered a top physiologist? Answer: WW talks about Woolsey’s status as one of the top neurophysiologists in the world.

00:56:00	No question: He describes new methods that began to supercede those used by Woolsey.  Because Woolsey was not interested in keeping up with these new methods, he instead shifted into more administrative positions.  Woolsey was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and also played a role in setting up the Waisman Center.

00:59:29	Question: Woolsey continued to work on mapping after he retired? Answer: After Woolsey retired, he continued to work on mapping.  He had a lot of data he had not yet published because he had been too busy.

01:00:45	Question: What kind of person was Woolsey? Answer: WW describes Woolsey’s personality outside of the lab.
											
01:02:01	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 4/Side 1

01:02:05	No question: WW talks about Woolsey’s wife and children, one of whom became a major figure in neurophysiology.  

01:05:22	Question: I'd like to talk about the neuroanatomists. Answer: He discusses the neuroanatomists John Barnard, Konrad Akert and Jerzy E. Rose.

01:09:50	Question: What happened to Akert eventually? Answer: WW explains that Woolsey very much wanted to hire Rose, and pushed Akert into the anatomy department in order to create a place for Rose.  He describes Rose’s research into the neuroanatomy of the auditory nervous system.  Rose loved to debate with people and served as the philosopher of the neuroanatomy group.

01:17:40	Question: Could you talk about Dan for a moment? Answer: WW describes his work with a part-time member of the electrical engineering department who participated in the auditory experiments.
 
01:20:30	No question: He mentions that groups were located in different places around campus.  The auditory group was particularly isolated because it was in the basement of the Medical Sciences Building.  Once a month, WW and his wife prepared food and hosted a “neurofeast” in order to bring all of the members of the department together.

01:22:39	Question: It sounds as though there was a nice feeling in the department? Answer: WW describes the excitement he and his colleagues felt about their work.  As a break from an experiment, they would sometimes swim in the lake at 2 o’clock in the morning.

01:26:22	No question: The Sharington Society consisted of department members who attended weekly seminars to discuss their research.  The neurofeasts, which were introduced when Hind was chair, continued the tradition that Woolsey had started with these seminars.

01:28:11	Question: Did Woolsey form the department of neurophysiology or help bring that about? Answer: Woolsey engineered the formation of the neurophysiology department in the mid 1970s, shortly before he retired.  WW describes Hind’s tenure as chair of the department and the decline of neurophysiology that began in the early 1990s after the department was reabsorbed into physiology.

01:33:06	End of side. 

Tape 4/Side 2

01:33:09	Donata Oertel succeeded John Rhode as chair, WW recalls.  He regrets the end of neurophysiology’s golden age at UW.

01:37:28	End of side.  End of tape.  

Third Interview Session (July 12, 2001): Tapes 5-6

Tape 5/Side 1

00:00:52	Question: What research interests did you bring with you to UW? Answer: WW discusses the research interests he brought to UW.  The motivation underlying his research in neuroscience was a desire to understand how the brain is constructed and how it functions.

00:05:37	Question: Did you express your interest to Woolsey before you came here? Answer: He describes the letter he wrote to Woolsey requesting permission to come to UW, a letter which he later felt was naive and simplistic.  

00:07:15	Question: What did Woolsey consider when assigning research projects? Answer: WW explains that Woolsey assigned research projects to members of the department.  He talks about Woolsey as a mentor and a teacher.  The sterile, bloodless surgery that Woolsey taught WW to do was much less crude than the surgery WW had seen on his family’s farm as a child.

00:11:39	Question: Would he give you some responsibility during surgery? Answer: WW describes how Woolsey taught him to carry out brain surgery on rats.  WW would tap a rat’s finger during the surgery, then explore the brain with an electrode until his equipment indicated that he found the tactile area of the cortex.  Woolsey found a way to represent the data in a pictorial form.

00:17:45	Question: You were here as a post-doc initially, right? Answer: For two years, WW did post-graduate work at UW.  The National Institute of Health then funded his work.  He continues to describe his research and mentions the research group with which he worked.

00:22:43	Question: At what point did you become faculty members? Answer: After holding a position as a post-doctorate, WW became an instructor.  Whatever he found during one experiment would dictate the direction that his research took next.  WW gained more latitude over his research over time, although he continued to meet with Woolsey regularly.

00:25:38	Question: Talk about the evolution of your research. Answer: WW describes the evolution of his research on behavior and how the brain works.  He drew upon literature in several areas for his interdisciplinary work.  He gives examples of complex processes he enjoyed watching, such as people dancing or displaying anger.

00:31:20	End of side. 

Tape 5/Side 2

00:31:26	No question: WW continues to discuss his research interests.  He says he studied social behavior by watching people and animals interact.

00:36:26	Question: What were some of the most significant things you found? Answer: He describes some of the significant findings he made during his career.  Some of his early research was based on the brain of the raccoon.  This research demonstrated that the raccoon’s somatic sensory area for its hands was larger than that in humans.

00:39:53	No question: At the time he was studying raccoons, the correlation between bumps on the brain and the brain’s functional capacity was controversial.  His research demonstrated that this correlation between form and function did in fact exist, both in the raccoon and in other species.
			
00:44:18	No question: WW describes slicing up a raccoon brain to study the cortex, the thalamus and the medulla.  

00:46:06	Question: It sounds as though after your post-doc work you became heads of your own research groups. Answer: After completing their post-doctorate work, Hind, Benjamin and WW took charge of their own research groups.  Woolsey’s groups continued to study vision.

00:47:14	No question: WW describes some brain casts he owns.  He recalls the process of capturing an animal and making the brain cast by passing a fixative through the brain and then pulling the skull away from the brain.  

00:51:17	Question: So you went up to the Aleutian Islands for the seals? Answer: He talks about obtaining seals brains in Alaska and says that for some of the animals he bought the brain casts.  He explains how he started his brain cast collection.  On one occasion he transported an anesthetized zebra from the Madison Zoo to the lab in his jeep in order to obtain its brain.  After mentioning his post-doctorate John Johnson’s involvement in collecting brains, WW notes that the collection of 275 brains is probably the largest collection of brains in the world.

0:55:58	Question: You're in the process of transferring the collection to the National Museum of Health and Medicine? Answer: WW talks about transferring UW’s brain cast collection to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington D.C.  This museum has been given brain collections from around the country. John Johnson’s collection of Australian marsupials is being merged with WW’s collection, and will also be sent to Washington.

00:58:43	Question: You worked on the Florida manatee? Answer: WW describes his work with the Florida manatee.  He explains his hypothesis that the smooth surface of the manatee’s brain relates to the animal’s limited locomotor demands.

01:02:40	End of side.  End of tape.  

Tape 6/Side 1

01:02:45	Question: Are there any post-docs who jump out at you that you'd like to talk about? Answer: WW discusses some of his outstanding post-doctorates, including John Johnson, Lillian Pubols and Benjamin Pubols, and the research projects they undertook.  He mentions some work on sensory receptors in the paws of dogs, raccoons and cats.

01:08:06	No question: He describes another student who studied the beaver’s tail.

01:10:50	Question: What were the main changes that you saw within the department and the field while you were there? Answer: WW discusses changes that took place in the department between his arrival in 1954 and his retirement in 1990.  Research now centers on finer, more molecular problems than it once did.  This shift relates to changes in technology such as improvements in microelectrodes.  Training has remained quite similar; it is still done according to the apprenticeship model.

01:15:54	Question: Do you have any closing comments you would like to make about your career at the university? Answer: WW makes closing comments about his career at UW.

01:16:58	End of side.

END of Oral History #556