Marian Diamond Biography

Marian Diamond (née Cleeves; November 11, 1926 – July 25, 2017) was a pioneering researcher and educator who is considered one of the founders of modern neuroscience. She and her team were the first to publish evidence that the brain can change with experience and improve with enrichment, a paradigm-breaking study that was the first hard data confirming what we now call plasticity in the brain. Her research on the brain of Albert Einstein helped fuel the on-going scientific revolution in our understanding of the roles of glial cells in the brain. Her YouTube Human Anatomy lectures were the second most popular college course in the world in 2010. She was a professor of anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Other published research explored differences between the cerebral cortex of male and female rats, and the link between positive thinking and immune health, and the role of women in science.