Donald Olding Hebb was born July 22, 1904, in the small community of Chester Basin on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Both his parents were physicians; his two brothers followed in their footsteps, and his sister Catherine became a well-known neurophysiologist after receiving her medical degree. Donald, however, was the family's nonconformist: he wanted to be a novelist, and in 1925 he graduated from Dalhousie University with a degree in English. He spent the next two years teaching and traveling. Hebb never completed his novel, but he was an excellent writer (his classical work on the neurological bases of behavior, The Organization of Behavior, 1949, is eminently readable), and he taught numerous students how to communicate clearly.

Donald Hebb (Peter M. Milner)

Early Career

In 1927, having become interested in the work of Sigmund Freud, Hebb enrolled as a part-time graduate student in psychology at McGill University...