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Friday Evening Lecture Series
 06/20/03 (Lang Lecture)
Scents and Sensibility: Pheromones and Social Odors in Humans and Other Animals
Martha McClintock, The University of Chicago
Introduction by Jelle Atema, Professor of Biology, Director, Boston University Marine Program
Lecture Abstract:
Pheromones are specialized social chemosignals that regulate fertility, sexual motivation and emotions. Miniscule amounts exert their effects unconsciously. Body scents are consciously detectable as odors, and yet can also provide unconscious information such as genetic compatibility between people. Finally, there is a newly discovered type of chemosignal, vasanas, which is an odor at high concentrations, yet has unconscious effects at low concentrations. Each of these subtle unconscious signals may inform our social choices and modulate our emotional reactions.
Martha K. McClintock is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, and the Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago. She received an A.B. degree in Psychology from Wellesley College in 1969 and studied Experimental Psychology and Sociobiology in Harvard University’s Graduate Program. McClintock received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. Dr. McClintock’s ongoing research programs include pheromonal communication, immune function and susceptibility to disease, psychosomatics in obstetrics and gynecology, sexuality, labor complications and neural development of human infants. Dr. McClintock is the recipient of numerous academic honors, including the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association (1982); the MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (1992); the Edith Krieger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor (Northwestern University (1993 and 2000); and the Henry G. Walter Sense of Smell Award, Sense of Smell Institute (2001). She is a member of several professional societies and has been awarded many fellowships including NIMH Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship and an open fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from Stanford University. Dr. McClintock teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, faculty seminars, is a regular guest lecturer and member of student thesis committees. She has served as consultant to the Museum of Science and Industry Exhibit on "Learning and Learning Disabilities: Explorations of the Human Brain"—which won the 1990 American Association of Museums Exhibit Award—and currently serves on eleven advisory and editorial boards including the Society for the Study of Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and General Psychology Review.
Jelle Atema received graduate degrees in sensory biology and physics in 1966 from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and his Ph.D. in sensory biology from the University of Michigan in 1969. Dr. Atema came to Woods Hole in 1970 as Assistant Scientist in the Chemistry department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In 1974 he joined the Boston University Marine Program, first as Associate Professor, then as Professor and as its Director since 1990. He is also a Research Fellow at Boston University's Cognitive Neuroscience Department. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Humboldt Senior Research Fellowship. Dr. Atema is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and inaugurated the First Annual Distinguished Lecture in Marine Neurosciences at the University of Miami in 2000. Dr. Atema has served the MBL as course director and on many committees including the Board of Trustees (1985-1993) and currently the Science Council. He is known for his work in Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals and for his reconstructions of paleolithic flutes. He was a student of the late Jean-Pierre Rampal, the French flute master who joined Dr. Atema on the Lillie Auditorium stage in 1988 for a performance of the MBL-Suite by Woods Hole composer Ezra Laderman commissioned for the MBL Centennial.
About the Lang Lecture
The annual Lang Lecture is held in memory of Dr. Fred Lang, a neurobiologist with the Boston University Marine Program at the MBL who was killed tragically in an automobile accident in December 1978.
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