Israel Rosenfield studied mathematics as an undergraduate at New York University and received his MD from the New York University School of Medicine and his PhD from Princeton University. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a frequent guest lecturer at universities, museums and other cultural institutions in North America, Europe and Asia (China, Japan and India). Professor Rosenfield's articles have appeared in The New York Review of Books to which he is a long-time contributor. Among his books that have been translated into many languages (including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, Greek, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese) are The Invention of Memory: A New View of the Brain (1988 Basic Books); The Strange, Familiar and Forgotten: An Anatomy of Consciousness (1992 Knopf); and DNA for Beginners (with Edward Ziff, 1984, Norton) – an updated edition will appear in 2008. In 2000 Rosenfield published the satirical novel Freud's "Megalomania" (Norton), which was cited as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2006 he published a completely new version of his L’étrange, le familier et l’oublié (Champs Flammarion), and he is presently finishing two book length manuscripts, one in the neurosciences and genetics, and one a work of satirical fiction. He writes and lectures extensively about the neurosciences, but feels very much a part of the world of the arts as well. Rosenfield's research and writings have been a focus of interest for contemporary artists. He is a scientific adviser and participant in the Serpentine Gallery Marathon in London in October 2007, as well as a permanent adviser to the Japanese sponsored Bridge the Gap conferences (Science and the Arts) that will host a series of lectures by him on the brain, memory and perception, in Japan in 2008. He has contributed to the exhibition catalogues of such artists as Olafur Eliasson (Venice Biennale, 2003: Tate-Modern, London, 2004; Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 2002), Anri Sala (Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris 2004), Anna Gaskell (Yvon Lambert, Paris 2004), Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno (No Ghost, Just a Shell, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands 2000-2003). He has also participated in the exhibitions and contributed essays for the catalogues of Laboratorium in Antwerp (1999), Bridge the Gap in Kitakyushu, Japan (2001), La Fabbrica del Pensiero (Florence 1988), La Ville et la memoire, Villa Medici (Rome 1999). He has appeared on radio and television in the United States, England, France, Italy, Germany, India and Japan.