Drexel undergraduate students are researching individually-chosen topics and using Legacy Center collections in their research, under the supervision of Professor Lloyd Ackert, Teaching Professor of History, and with the guidance of Legacy Center archivists. Each student is creating a blog post and adding to it as they progress with their work. Read down for additions to the post.

by Dez Uwaomah, Research Co-op Student, 2021

Portrait of Hartwig Kuhlenbeck, MD

Based on the archival collections at the Legacy Center, and Kuhlenbeck’s published work and historical writing, I have been exploring the career of Hartwig Kuhlenbeck, MD from the end of World War I in 1918 to his appointment as Research Professor in Neurobiology in 1963. An exploration of Dr. Hartwig Kuhlenbeck’s life story, discoveries in neuroscience, and his professional network help us to understand his contributions to the history of neuroscience. I am interested in the different practices he developed in the early stages of brain study, especially the way he addressed/investigated the relationship between brain and consciousness, and the materialistic and idealistic approaches to the phenomenology of neuroscience. Hartwig taught neuroanatomy at the Woman’s Medical College for 35 years. His colleagues and students considered him to have significant influence on the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and described him as respectable, welcoming, and supportive. Reading about Kuhlenbeck’s achievements has been a great experience; as a neuroscience student, it just motivates me to work harder to eventually be as established as he was.