“Self-Awareness” in the Pigeon

December 29, 2004April 12, 2021 by Robert Lanza

SCIENCE 212; 695 (1981)
Robert Lanza (with B. F. Skinner & Robert Epstein)

Photo of Self-Awareness In The Pigeon

Lanza Named One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World

Dr. Robert Lanza selected for the 2014 TIME 100 list of the hundred most influential people in the world, along with Pope Francis, Beyoncé, Vladimin Putin, Robert Redford, and other artists, pioneers, leaders, titans and icons.

Lanza Featured in Fortune Magazine

“…he’s the standard-bearer for stem cell research”

“Lanza published a paper in The Lancet earlier this year detailing the results of early clinical trials involving two women suffering from macular degeneration. A UCLA ophthalmologist injected each woman with 50,000 retinal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells, and according to the paper, both claim to have better vision as a result. They’re not 20/20. But after a single injection one now walks the mall alone, uses her computer, and can pour a cup of coffee. The other sees colors and can read five letters on the eye chart. If Lanza is remembered one day as the man who saved millions from blindness, his story will provide a ready-made biopic for Ben Affleck. Born in the hardscrabble town of Roxbury and raised by a professional gambler, he escaped the economic underclass through intelligence and imagination. At 13, he altered the DNA of a chicken to make it change color; the experiment was published in Nature. His sisters never graduated from high school. He received an MD from Penn and a Fulbright scholarship, and has collaborated with giants, including B.F. Skinner and Jonas Salk. He was the first ever to clone an endangered species, and now he’s the standard-bearer for stem cell research.”

Dr. Robert Lanza Featured on ABC’s Barbara Walters Special

Robert Lanza featured on “Live to be 150, Can You Do It?”.

by ABC News

Lanza Named One of the Top 50 “World Thinkers”

Dr. Lanza selected as one of Prospect Magazine's "World Thinkers 2015." The thinkers were chosen for "engaging in original and profound ways with the central questions of the world today," as well as for their continuing significance for "this year's biggest questions" (in economics, science, philosophy, cultural and social criticism and in politics).

Lanza Considered One of the Fathers of Applied Stem Cell Biology

“Robert Lanza is widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of the field of applied stem cell biology.”

- Mark S Blumenkranz, MD, MMS
HJ Smead Professor, Stanford University, and Trustee, Brown University

Google Scholar Citations

h-index for Lanza = 81

From Wikipedia: The h-index measures both the productivity and impact of a scientist or scholar. A value for h of about 12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at major [US] research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences. According to Hirsch (who put forward the h-index), an h index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional.

Lanza has published extensively in leading scientific journals.

Here is a sampling of his papers:

Science (207: 543, 1980)
Science (212: 695, 1981)
Science (283: 1849, 1999)
Science (288: 665, 2000)
Science (294: 1893, 2001)
Science (295: 819, 2002)
Nature (252: 597, 1974)
Nature (308: 61, 1984)
Nature (439: 216, 2006)
Nature (444: 481, 2006)
Cell (11: 115, 1977)
Cell (17: 491, 1979)
Lancet (365: 1636, 2005)
Lancet (379: 713, 2012)
Lancet (385: 509, 2015)

Robert Lanza Featured in Financial Times

At Home with Robert Lanza, stem-cell and cloning pioneer

Professionally, Lanza works at the cutting edge of human discovery, but the majority of his domestic space looks like a museum from a bygone era.

Lanza Voted Top 4 “Most Influential People on Stem Cells”

Lanza featured in the 2013 “TOP 50 Global Stem Cell Influencers.” It is the result of a global survey of the stem cell community, which yielded thousands of votes. The 50 personalities were picked based on their career achievements whether this was groundbreaking discovery and research, innovation, or lifetime dedication. Lanza was among the top four on the list, alongside James Thomson and Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka.

Lanza Featured in Der Spiegel, Europe’s largest news magazine

The Dawning of a New Era of Hope

Stem cell researcher Robert Lanza hopes to save thousands of lives -- and for a long time this caused him to fear for his own… At the time, a doctor was threatened at a nearby fertility clinic, and a pipe bomb exploded at a bio lab in Boston. "Back then I thought that there was probably a 50-50 chance that I was going to get knocked off because I was so visible," says the doctor. "I said, okay, try to kill me -- I'm still going to do what I think is right." In Lanza's case, doing what is "right" involves working with therapies based on human stem cells. The blind shall see again; the paralyzed shall walk again; the hemophiliac shall not bleed anymore. That may sound like something out of the Bible, but Lanza is no faith healer. In fact, the US business magazine Fortune called him "the standard-bearer for stem cell research." Lanza is often compared to the main character played by Matt Damon in the film "Good Will Hunting," a highly talented outsider who, like Lanza, comes from a humble background.

Initial Success: "We have some surprisingly good visual outcome," says Steven Schwartz, an eye surgeon at UCLA. He says that one of his patients can read a clock again and go shopping, while another can recognize colors again. Lanza is a "genius" and his work is "stellar," Schwartz says.

Lanza’s Forthcoming Book on cover of Publishers Weekly

OBSERVER: A Novel

A mind-expanding journey to the very edges of science, OBSERVER will thrill you, inspire you, and lead you to think about life and the power of the imagination in startling new ways.

“Robert Lanza has taken the gigantic step of incorporating his ideas into a science fiction novel with Nancy Kress … brilliant … a riveting and moving story."―Rhonda Byrne, #1 NY Times bestselling author

“The cutting edge of science tipping into something new and marvelous … a startling, fascinating novel”―Kim Stanley Robinson, NY Times bestselling author

“A thrilling story you won’t forget.”―Robin Cook, #1 NY Times bestseller

“OBSERVER is the best of science and fiction—an intellectual adventure with real heart."―Daryl Gregory, award-winning author.

Press Release and Q&A

The Grand Biocentric Design

HOW LIFE CREATES REALITY

What is consciousness? Why are we here? Where did it all come from? Humans have been asking these questions forever, but science hasn’t succeeded in providing many answers – until now. In The Grand Biocentric Design, Robert Lanza, one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” is joined by theoretical physicist Matej Pavsic to shed light on the big picture that has long eluded philosophers and scientists alike.

"quite thrilling ... its notions are exciting ones, and they do a sound job of linking them to observable, replicable experiments. Fans of revolutionary science—or just big, cerebral questions—will enjoy this ambitious work. A thought-provoking dispatch from the frontier of physics."
—Kirkus Reviews

"a masterpiece”—Anthony Atala, W. Boyce Professor, Wake Forest University

“paradigm-shattering”―Lucian Del Priore, Robert R. Young Professor, Yale University

“It’s fabulous—I couldn’t put it down!” —Ralph Levinson, Professor Emeritus, UCLA

“Robert Lanza is one of the most creative and brilliant scientists I have ever known”—Kwang-Soo Kim, Professor, Harvard University

Previous News

DISCOVER Interview: Robert Lanza

Growing new body parts, reversing paralysis, stretching the limits of the human life span: This trailblazing stem cell researcher believes it is all within our reach.

Discover Magazine

Biocentrism / Robert Lanza’s Theory of Everything

BIOCENTRISM

How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

“Like “A Brief History of Time” it is indeed stimulating and brings biology into the whole. Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. Almost every society of mankind has explained the mystery of our surroundings and being by invoking a god or group of gods. Scientists work to acquire objective answers from the infinity of space or the inner machinery of the atom. Lanza proposes a biocentrist theory which ascribes the answer to the observer rather than the observed. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole. The book will appeal to an audience of many different disciplines because it is a new way of looking at the old problem of our existence. Most importantly, it makes you think.”

– Nobel Prize Winner E. Donnall Thomas

Beyond Biocentrism

BEYOND BIOCENTRISM

Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death

Biocentrism shocked the world with a radical rethinking of the nature of reality … but that was just the beginning.

The Biocentric Universe Theory: Life Creates Time, Space, and the Cosmos Itself

The Biocentric Universe Theory: Stem-cell guru Robert Lanza presents a radical new view of the universe and everything in it.

Discover Magazine

Lanza’s Research Featured on the Cover of U.S. News & World Report

Lanza’s team cloned the first human embryo. How American scientists made history by creating lifesaving embryos cells.

U.S. News & World Report

Lanza’s Team Clones First Endangered Species

Endangered species cloned. This is the first time one species has been cloned using the eggs and surrogate mother of an entirely different species. Scientists think they can use the same technique to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other extinct species.

Newsweek

Lanza Receives “Rave Award” for Medicine

Robert Lanza Receives Award for Eye-Opening Work on Embryonic Stem Cells

Robert Lanza Featured in People Magazine

Send in the Clones. Biologist Robert Lanza has a plan to help endangered species fight extinction.

People Magazine

Lanza’s Research Featured on Front Page of New York Times

Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human embryo without destroying it.

New York Times

Robert Lanza Featured on Front Page of New York Times

Stem Cell Test Tried on Mice Saves Embryo. Technique Could Shift Debate on Humans.

New York Times

A New Theory of the Universe

A New Theory of the Universe: Biocentrism builds on quantum physics by adding life to the equation.

The American Scholar

Featured on the Cover of Wired Magazine

Seven Days of Creation. The inside story of a human cloning experiment.

Wired Magazine

Lanza’s Early Cloning Research Featured on the Front Covers of Scientific American, Wired Magazine, and U.S.News & World Report, Among Others

U.S. News & World Report Cover Story

“…his mentors described him [Lanza] as a “genius,” a “renegade” thinker, even likening him to Einstein.”

“Robert Lanza is the living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in the movie Good Will Hunting. Growing up underprivileged in Stoughton, Mass., south of Boston, the young preteen caught the attention of Harvard Medical School researchers when he showed up on the university steps having successfully altered the genetics of chickens in his basement. Over the next decade, he was to be “discovered” and taken under the wing of scientific giants such as psychologist B. F. Skinner, immunologist Jonas Salk, and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His mentors described him as a “genius,” a “renegade” thinker, even likening him to Einstein.”

Research with B. F. Skinner

“Greatest Psychologist of All Time”

Most Influential Psychologists
(American Psychological Association)

1. B. F. Skinner
2. Jean Piaget
3. Sigmund Freud

Symbolic Communication Between Two Pigeons

SCIENCE 207; 543 (1980)
Lanza (with Skinner & Epstein)

“Self-Awareness” in the Pigeon

SCIENCE 212; 695 (1981)
Lanza (with Skinner & Epstein)

“Lying” in the Pigeon

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 38; 201 (1982)
Lanza (with Skinner & Starr)

Lanza & Skinner’s Work Featured in TIME Magazine

Pigeon Talk − A triumph for bird brains

TIME Magazine

Lanza & Skinner’s Work on Symbolic Communication Featured in New York Times

Pigeons’ ‘Conversation’ Triggers a Debate About Language

New York Times

Lanza & Skinner’s Work on Self-Awareness in New York Times

Science Watch: ‘Self-Awareness’ in Animals

New York Times

Lanza and Skinner’s Work Featured in My Weekly Reader

Pigeons Punch Buttons. Talking or Training?

My Weekly Reader

Research with Jonas Salk and Christiaan Barnard

Work with Jonas Salk

Developed Polio Vaccine

J. Supramol. Struct 182;33 (1979)
Lanza (with Salk)

Work with Christiaan Barnard

Performed the World’s First Heart Transplant

New England Journal of Medicine 307; 1275 (1982)
Lanza (with Barnard & Cooper)

JAMA 249; 1746 (1983)
Lanza (with Barnard, Cooper & Cassidy)

American Heart Journal 107; 8 (1984)
Lanza (with Barnard, Cooper & Boyd)

Research with Rodney Porter and Gerald Edelman

Work with Professor Rodney Porter

Recipient of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology

Lanza worked with Porter at Oxford University in 1977

Work with Dr. Gerald Edelman

Nobel-winner was "The Father of Modern Immunology"

Lanza worked with Edelman at Rockefeller University in 1976

Death is Only the Beginning

If death doesn’t exist, then what happened to your dog?

Robert Lanza takes the Ice Bucket Challenge

"Before I did the #icebucketchallenge, I challenged the leader of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), Dr. Bob Lanza, to do the Ice Bucket Challenge. He did it and leading up to it he provided a quite articulate message for context (see video). Bob is one very cool guy even without ice water."
Paul Knoepfler

Entire Company takes the Ice Bucket Challenge. Click Here to See Video.

Lanza Featured in OMNI MAGAZINE’s Collector’s Edition

Omni Magazine is back. Featured story:

Building Doctor Who’s Time Machine

What if you could travel through time just like you navigate space? The journey starts here

OMNI Magazine [Read More]

Biocentrism Explored

Rethinking Time, Space, and the Nature of the Universe.