by Dr. Steven Matthysse given at Dr. Holzman's memorial service:

Philip S. Holzman, Ph.D. 1922-2004

Before beginning my remarks, I would like to relate to you one of the eeriest experiences of my life. It happened yesterday, while I was driving home from the MGH, and thinking about what I might say today. I was about to get on Route 2, when a car pulled up next to me in the right lane, with the license plate "PHIL". It was a red Jaguar. I thought: there is reincarnation after all, and Phil has come back to us. Not only that, but he's moved up a notch in his next life; now he's driving a Jaguar instead of a Mercedes. I don't know what to make of the incident; probably nothing; but Phil would have enjoyed the story.

Phil had a second family - his lab. I am glad members of that family are with us today. It fell to Debbie and me to break the news of Phil's grave post-surgical complication, and later, of his death. As I watched the devastation as we all sat around a table in the lab, I could see plainly that this was not just an ordinary workplace group, but a family. I'm representing this family here. Any of us could have spoken.

How was it that the group Phil created became a family? What was his magic? First of all, Phil was a visionary. He saw that very careful psychological measurement could be an indicator of brain processes in psychiatric disease, alongside - and sometimes even more powerful than MRI and other electronic techniques. The measurements of eye tracking and thought disorder that he pioneered had already become standards in the scientific community. There was also new work on memory processes, and more yet to come. The lab felt the power of Phil's vision. They believed in what they were doing. The conviction that it was important and unique showed up in how they treated experimental subjects, and how they treated each other.

Second, Phil was an astonishing optimist. He loved what he was doing; it showed and it spread. He was in his element planning experiments and talking about data. Everyone who contributed data to a lab project felt that his or her piece was important. He was even an optimist about granting agencies and journal reviewers; if they didn't love our proposal or weren't ravished by our manuscript the first time, they would see the light; don't give up: revise, resubmit. It almost always worked. He was an optimist about people; don't go off in a huff because a collaborator drags his feet, don't give up on a student or research assistant who is having trouble easing into the lab. And people did come around, most of the time. Perhaps most important, Phil was an optimist about Nature. Nature would yield its secrets if we persevered. There would be meaning in the data, despite its bewildering correlations and complexities. I think Nature loves an optimist. Phil had an amazing record of guessing the right direction to go in, ferreting out the hypothesis that would later turn out to be corroborated. Nature cooperated.

Third, Phil was a "Happy Warrior". Indeed, he could be a warrior when he had to be. He fought for the causes he believed in. The last thing he was working on, before the surgery, was a letter to the journal "Nature" explaining why the lab's latest manuscript was worthy of appearing in that august publication. I know his warrior side personally, because he fought for me, when certain powers of darkness at the Medical School thought the faculty needed a theoretical neuroscientist about as much as a fish needs a bicycle. He fought until he got me the position he thought I should have.

Fourth, Phil was totally present. He took the heaviest duties on himself. He would write the first draft of the papers, and send them around to collaborators for amendations, rather than prodding other people to start the work. He would take on even menial tasks to save other people the trouble, like fixing up the references to get them in the format the journal wanted. Each day, the moment he came into the lab, he was available. He would drop everything, if someone wanted to talk to him. "Come into my orfice," he would say, with an emphasis on the "r". I would tease him about the telephone, because he could never let it ring without picking it up, even if we were in a meeting. Somebody might need him, he said. For Phil, science was a communal enterprise. Everybody who had ever glanced at a rough draft of the paper had to be a co-author. Debbie and I might grumble about getting up early to visit the lab of some scientific prima donna collaborator and nag him to do what he promised or smooth his feathers, but Phil would be ready to pick us up - and he would do all the driving.

Fifth, perhaps most important of all. Phil loved us. He cared deeply and personally about each of his colleagues and collaborators. In a few cases, he got drawn into tragedies that befell them - Smadar Levin, whose bright sun set before it had hardly risen; Pat Goldman, taken by a senseless accident in the prime of her life. I was struck, sitting with him after that disaster, by how immediately, like a reflex, he picked up the phone and offered his consolation. And he rejoiced in our many happy occasions too - our weddings and babies and degrees. He attended all the graduations of his students.

I would like to say a few things about the future of the lab. Some people make great discoveries, or have great ideas, but we can only admire them, not follow. Albert Einstein would be an example. Phil was different. He championed a paradigm of psychological experimentation that ought to go hand in hand with biological neuroscience. That paradigm can be followed by others, and it should be permanently an integral part of the Harvard / McLean research enterprise. There is every reason for the Holzman laboratory to continue into the future, carrying out his principles, even if he is not at the helm.

I would like to close with a few thoughts about what may seem like an odd combination of subjects, neuroscience and death. Reductive materialism has become nearly the standard philosophy of neuroscience, perhaps more than in any other branch of science. In the chutzpah of youth, and impressed by their own burgeoning discoveries, it is typical for neuroscientists to define mind as identical with the brain, or at best as a kind of emanation from the brain, like smoke arising from the machine. I don't know that Phil would agree with my point of view, which is very different, but he was never fully comfortable with the materialism of neuroscience. The alternative view, which I believe, is that the human person is not coextensive with the brain, nor is it manufactured by the brain. Rather I think of the person as a substantial entity on its own, expressing itself in the world through the medium of the body. On this view, when death occurs, the person is not destroyed. What is lost is our access, except indirectly through his works and our memories. Whether in some way, in some unknown future, the person will again become fully present to us is a matter of faith and not of science, but I personally believe that it is possible. Therefore I won't say to my beloved colleague "Farewell", but "'Till we meet again."

Steven W. Matthysse, Ph.D.
June 4, 2004