Westheimer was born on 13 May 1924 in Berlin into an observant Jewish family—long settled in Germany and traced back at least to Schutzjude Joseph Aaron Westheimer born in 1768 in Menzingen, Baden. He is the younger of two sons. In 1938, state-sanctioned attacks against Jews in Nazi Germany prompted the family to emigrate to Australia, settling in Sydney. Shortly after arriving in Sydney, Westheimer completed high-school by self-study and enrolled in the professional Optometry program at the Sydney Technical College, from which he graduated with honours and the College Medal in 1943. While practising optometry he pursued further study, leading to a BSc in mathematics and physiology from Sydney University and submission of a thesis for the Fellowship of the Sydney Technical College. In 1951, Westheimer went to the US, first as a graduate student at Ohio State University with Glenn A. Fry and then in various professorial ranks in optometry schools of the University of Houston, Ohio State and University of California, Berkeley, interrupted by post-doctoral studies at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and at the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. In 1960, he was appointed as an associate professor at the School of Optometry at Berkeley, becoming professor in 1963. In 1967, he joined Berkeley's Department of Physiology-Anatomy, later merged into the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, in which he established and headed the Division of Neurobiology until becoming professor in the Graduate School in 1994. Since 1994 he has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Rockefeller University in New York. Westheimer never relinquished the Australian citizenship gained by naturalisation. Appointment to membership in the Order of Australia in 2009 recognised his continued identification with the country that provided refuge from the holocaust. Appreciations of Gerald Westheimer's scientific and academic contributions have appeared at various stages of his career. In addition there is an autobiographical sketch.
Westheimer, G., Modulation thresholds for sinusoidal light distribution on the retina. Journal of Physiology, 152, 67–74.
Westheimer, G., & Campbell, F. W.. Light distribution in the image formed by the living human eye. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 52, 1040–1045.
Westheimer, G.. Spatial interaction in the human retina during scotopic vision. Journal of Physiology, 181, 881–894.
Westheimer, G.. The Maxwellian view. Vision Research, 6, 669–682.
Westheimer, G.. Spatial interaction in human cone vision. Journal of Physiology, 190, 139–154.
Westheimer, G.. Visual acuity and hyperacuity. Investigative Ophthalmolology, 14, 570–572.
Gilbert, C., Ito, M., Kapadia, M., & Westheimer, G.. Interactions between attention, context and learning in primary visual cortex. Vision Research, 40, 1217–1226.
Westheimer, G.. The resolving power of the eye. Vision Research, 45, 945–947.
Music and Philanthropy
Gerald Westheimer is an accomplished recreational violinist and has donated a number of fine 19th-century violins to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, along with an endowment for their upkeep. According to Westheimer, the purpose of this collection is to “enable talented young Australian artists studying at the Conservatorium to perfect their performance skills on high quality instruments”.
