Introduction
Szent-Gyorgyi's lecture proposing the solid-state electronic processes could play a functional role in living organisms was given on March 21 1941 as World War II literally raged over Europe. While it was the lecture that provided a seminal idea, it was the war itself that provided the instruments to explore the idea and the concepts to strengthen it.
Recognition of the fact that national strength rested primarily upon science and technology produced an unparalleled outpouring of funds and facilities for scientific investigation. Interdisciplinary teams worked at both basic and applied levels with a speed and intensity motivated by a genuine concern for national survival. In a few short years major advances were made not only in devices and technologies, but also in ideas and concepts that were to have far-reaching consequences. When Szent-Gyorgyi made his suggestion, all such solid-state electronic mechanisms were little more than laboratory curiosities. War-related investigations on the basic electronic structure of matter enabled Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain to develop the transistor, an electronic solid-state device working with a few volts and a trickle of current that duplicated the functions of vacuum tubes many times larger in size and requiring hundreds of times the amount of electrical power. The applications of electrical technology shifted away from concepts of power engineering with large scale currents and voltages to electronic engineering using devices of microscopic size powered by minuscule currents. Today the number and variety of uses of such solid-state electronic devices is ever increasing.
Before the war there had been, as always, an interest in how the brain and nervous system functioned. Since the nature of the nerve impulse had been determined, the emphasis was on how this signal, coupled with the anatomical complexity of the nervous system, could produce the integrated "higher" nervous functions such as memory, and thought. An informal group of mathematicians, physiologists, and others from Hanard and MIT that had been interested in this problem became the nucleus for the United State's computer development program. As a result many of the early concepts built into the machines were derived from neurophysiological concepts, the functions and organizations of the living systems becoming the models for the machine systems. With progressive advances in technology, the need for this relationship diminished and by the late 40's computer technology and information theory were sufficiently advanced to begin the development of specific concepts leading to the new science of "cybemetics"-a word coined by Norbert Weiner, a prominent mathematician at MIT, referring to the process of communication and control, whether in the machine or living organism (I). In the 50's a number of the scientists associated with the developments in this field (notably von Neumann and McCulloch) began to try to apply these advanced concepts of cybernetics to the problem of integrated brain function (2).
Even in the more mundane area of instrumentation, war-related needs for sensitivity and stability in electrical measurement led to the development of entirely new circuits and measuring devices.
The result of all of this was a very real scientific revolution: in a relatively short time science moved from the Victorian age to the electronic age. Two aspects of the new knowledge were of fundamental importance to biology; cybernetics and solid-state electronics. One would think that the intellectual ferment surrounding those developments would have been applied to a re-evaluation of the old concepts denying any relationship between electrical forces and living things. This, however, did not occur. Szent-Gyorgyi's suggestions (which were immeasurably strengthened by the new knowledge) were well received by the main body of biological science, and the solid-state physicists were reluctant to enter the messy, complex, biological world. Their investigations were limited to the study of electronic processes in ultra-pure crystals of organic chemicals such as anthracene. Most ironically of all, Szent-Gyorgyi's ideas seem to have been ignored by the few biological scientists who persisted in studying bioelectrical phenomena (3,4).