Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Very truly, my cup runneth o'er in this signal honor that you have bestowed on me. Quite naturally, there is a sense of personal fulfillment that a Society so unique in its membership and its missions now recognizes the significant growth in biomedical knowledge that has opened doors to a broader understanding of mechanisms that mediate biological effects of the virtually infinite spectrum of our natural electromagnetic environment, an environment in which all life on earth has evolved and one that bathes us from conception to death.
At the same time, I am deeply aware that no man is an island unto himself, and that what has been so painstakingly and even haltingly accomplished is the product of devoted teamwork in centers scattered widely across the world. Most often this work has been an exercise shared with physicists, biologists, and engineers, and equally often as a journey guided by intuitions of the possible, rather than in following the comfortable signposts that would have safely circumscribed our path within boundaries of long-established, but not necessarily appropriate, physical and physiological concepts.
To these beloved but absent colleagues in many countries, I shall pay special homage and offer abiding thanks for their contributions to our collective widsom, expecting that they, too, will share our special joy on this special day.
My own professional journey has followed a dual path that was shaped in essential ways from my teenage years in the 1930s. Those were the days of the pioneering work in radioastronomy by K.G. Jansky and Grote Reber, who observed the extraterrestrial origin of 20 MHz signals from Jupiter. With youthful zeal, I, too, sought these signals with a large homebuilt receiver in my freshman year in medical school. Although not a physician himself, my father exercised parental authority in assigning me to a medical career, following a family tradition that my son now carries