The Human Brain during the First Trimester 3.5- to 4.5-mm Crown-Rump Lengths (PDF)

Shirley A. Bayer received her PhD from Purdue University in 1974 and spent most of her scientific career working with Joseph Altman. She was a professor of biology at Indiana-Purdue University in Indianapolis for several years, where she taught courses in human anatomy and developmental neurobiology while continuing to do research in brain development. Her lengthy publication record of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles extends back to the mid 1970s. She has co-authored several books and many articles with her late spouse, Joseph Altman. It was her research (published in Science in 1982) that proved that new neurons are added to granule cells in the dentate gyrus during adult life, a unique neuronal population that grows. That paper stimulated interest in the dormant field of adult neurogenesis.

Joseph Altman, now deceased, was born in Hungary and migrated with his family via Germany and Australia to the United States. In New York, he became a graduate student in psychology in the laboratory of Hans-Lukas Teuber, earning a PhD in 1959 from New York University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, and later joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1968, he accepted a position as a professor of biology at Purdue University. During his career, he collaborated closely with Shirley A. Bayer. From the early 1960s to 2016, he published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, monographs, and online free books that emphasized developmental processes in brain anatomy and function. His most important discovery was adult neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons in the adult brain. This discovery was made in the early 1960s while he was based at MIT and was largely ignored in favor of the prevailing dogma that neurogenesis is limited to prenatal development. After Dr. Bayer's paper proved that new neurons are adding to granule cells in the hippocampus, his monumental