Marian C. Diamond (1926–2017)

Marian C. Diamond, née Cleeves, was born in Glendale, California and grew up in La Crescenta. She was educated with her siblings at Glendale High School and Glendale Community College, before going to the University of California, Berkeley.

After earning a bachelor's degree in 1948, she spent a summer at the University of Oslo, Norway, then returned to UC Berkeley for graduate studies, becoming the first female grad student in the department of anatomy.

While studying for her PhD degree, she also began to teach, a passion that continued well into her eighties. She received her PhD degree in human anatomy and began working as a research assistant at Harvard University in 1952. Dr. Diamond became the first woman science instructor at Cornell University in 1955. She returned to UC Berkeley in 1960 as a lecturer. She joined a research project with David Krech, Mark Rosenzweig, and Edward Bennett, as a neuroanatomist.

By 1964, she had the first evidence, from anatomical measurements, of plasticity in the mammalian cerebral cortex.
Dr. Diamond was named assistant professor in 1965, and later became a full professor. In 1984, she and her associates had access to sufficient tissue from Albert Einstein's brain to make the first-ever analysis of it, followed by publication of their research. That 1985 paper, "On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein" created controversy in academia over the role of glial cells, but also ushered in new interest in neuroglia.
Dr. Diamond was recognized as a pioneer in anatomical neuroscience whose major scientific contributions changed how we view the human brain. In 1950, she married Richard Martin Diamond, with whom she had four children before divorcing in 1979. In 1982, she remarried to Prof. Arnold Bernard Scheibel. The documentary My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond (2017) featured Dr. Diamond's life as a pioneering woman of science, her curiosity and passion for the human brain, as well as her research and love of teaching.