W. Alden Spencer Award ceremony at Columbia University honoring May-Britt and Edvard Moser for outstanding research in neuroscience.
On 29 September 2005, May-Britt and Edvard Moser were awarded the 28th annual W. Alden Spencer Award at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. The award recognized their outstanding research contributions to neuroscience, particularly in elucidating spatial representation in the hippocampal formation and entorhinal cortex.
The Spencer Award honors innovative and influential work in neurobiology and behavior. The Mosers’ experiments on place cells, head-direction cells, and emerging evidence of grid-like spatial coding put them at the forefront of systems-level studies of cognition. The Columbia ceremony linked their work to a lineage of major figures in brain research and highlighted its relevance to understanding memory, navigation, and disease.
Historically, this recognition underscored the growing international impact of the Trondheim-based laboratory, which was reshaping how neuroscientists think about cognitive maps. For women’s history, Moser’s presence as a co-recipient of a major U.S. neuroscience award emphasized the increasing, though still limited, representation of women among leading figures in theoretical and experimental brain science. The Spencer Award contributed to the momentum of honors that would soon include several major European prizes and, ultimately, the Nobel Prize.