Eugene Aserinsky (May 6, 1921 – July 22, 1998), a pioneer in sleep research, was a graduate student at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1953 when he discovered

REM sleep Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep or REMS) is a unique phase of sleep in mammals and birds, characterized by random rapid movement of the eyes, accompanied by low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vi ...

. He was the son of a dentist of Russian–Jewish descent. He made the discovery after hours spent studying the eyelids of sleeping subjects. While the phenomenon was in the beginning more interesting for a fellow of PhD student Aserinsky,

William Charles Dement William Charles Dement (July 29, 1928 – June 17, 2020) was an American sleep researcher and founder of the Sleep Research Center at Stanford University. He was a leading authority on sleep, sleep deprivation and the diagnosis and treatment of s ...

, both Aserinsky and their PhD adviser, Nathaniel Kleitman, went on to demonstrate that this "rapid-eye movement" was correlated with

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, al ...

ing and a general increase in

brain The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head ( cephalization), usually near organs for special ...

activity. Aserinsky and Kleitman pioneered procedures that have now been used with thousands of volunteers using the electroencephalograph. Because of these discoveries, Aserinsky and Kleitman are generally considered the founders of modern sleep research. Eugene Aserinsky died on July 22, 1998, when his car hit a tree north of

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

. An autopsy was inconclusive about the cause of the accident, but raised the possibility that it had resulted from him having fallen asleep at the wheel.Chip Brown, October 200
"The Stubborn Scientist Who Unraveled A Mystery of the Night"
Smithsonian Magazine He was 77 and lived in

Escondido, California Escondido is a city in San Diego County, California, United States. Located in the North County region, it was incorporated in 1888, and is one of the oldest cities in San Diego County. It has a population of 151,038 as of the 2020 census. Et ...

References

American physiologists 1921 births 1998 deaths Sleep researchers Dream University of Chicago alumni 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American physicians {{US-physician-stub