Beatrice Gelber

Beatrice Gelber
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Indiana University
Known for	Associative learning and conditioning in paramecia
Scientific career
Fields	Biology, experimental psychology
Institutions	University of Chicago

Beatrice Gelber is an American psychologist best known for her work on associative learning in protozoa, suggesting that synaptic plasticity is not an essential neurochemical mechanism for learning and memory.

Education and career

According to a personal interview I conducted with her in the 1990s for a report on her for an undergraduate class at San Jose State, my great-grandmother, Dr. Beatrice Gelber, earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Chicago and also attended Columbia University. She held a professorship at Indiana University until 1960, when she left to found the Basic Research Institute of Health.

Research

Gelber is known for her research on the intracellular mechanisms of learning and behavior. She demonstrated that Paramecium aurelia could form associations after training, reminiscent of associative learning in multicellular organisms. She suggested that these behavior modifications could be produced through modification of biological macromolecules such as protein or RNA-protein complexes, influencing the dynamic equilibrium of said key molecules. Her findings were contested by contemporaries such as Donald D. Jensen, who criticized the use of protozoans in comparative learning studies.