S. D. Porteus

Stanley Porteus lived an exciting and productive life, though he is known for a single contribution, his invention of the Porteus Mazes. A daring adventurer, he and his wife trekked throughout the Kalahari desert, testing natives for intelligence, using a series of mazes meant to capitalize on the tracking ability of the desert natives, whose "walkabouts" were an essential transition into manhood. Interestingly though, this simple test proved to have remarkable properties. For one thing, it was the only test to detect loss of function in patients with frontal lobe surgery in the infamous Columbia-Greystone project. Later we found the mazes to be exquisitely sensitive to drug treatments. When I visited Porteus in Honolulu he and his wife of some 50 years greeted me with charm and welcome. In his 80's then Porteus still was excited by new ideas, having hypothesized that lower latitudes had deleterious effects upon rats and possibly upon intelligence. This book is a testament to the adventure of discovery and science.… (more)