George James Cosmides

George James Cosmides, decorated veteran of World War II and innovative biomedical scientist, died February 12, 2017 in Santa Barbara, at age 90. The son of James George Cosmides and Catherine Palogaris Cosmides, Greek immigrants from Turkey, George was born July 23, 1926 in Pittsburgh, where he lived until he joined the army during World War II. As part of the 96th "Deadeye" Division (amphibious infantry), he fought in Leyte and Okinawa, two of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific campaign. In recognition of his bravery, he was awarded two Bronze Stars for Valor and the Purple Heart. During a reunion of his unit in Chicago, a beautiful girl, waiting for the bus with his buddy's sister, had the audacity (as he put it) to smile at him. The girl, Nasia Murlas, was the love of his life. They were married for 64 years, until she died in 2012.

 

George graduated in pharmacy from the University of Pittsburgh, and earned his doctorate in pharmacology from Purdue University in 1956. Always an independent thinker, George championed many new ideas before they became mainstream. In an era dominated by Freudians, he thought it would be useful to see mental illness through the lens of the biological sciences. He helped develop the first major antipsychotic drugs in the US (the phenothiazines, used to treat schizophrenia), and then taught at the University of Rhode Island. In 1959 George moved to the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he helped establish the new field of psychopharmacology. He loved the National Institutes of Health, and worked there for 38 years. In the early 1960s he raised concerns about effects of long term exposure to low levels of toxins in the environment, and anticipated individualized medicine in papers on individual variation in response to drugs. George wanted the vast amounts of data about diseases and their treatment to be organized and available to the entire world so, before the internet existed, he created databases at the National Library of Medicine to make this a reality. If you have ever searched on Medline, you have used one of his projects.

 

George was a fantastic father to his only child, Leda, who was born in 1957. Rockville Maryland had sports teams for boys but not girls, so George - a feminist before it was mainstream- organized a softball league for girls and taught Leda how to pitch. George and Nasia were founding members of St George Greek Orthodox Church in Bethesda, Maryland, where George coached the girl's basketball team for years. Because of George's dinner table rants, Leda took it for granted that science should be interdisciplinary and that biology was relevant to the behavioral sciences - foundations of her own career in science. George and Nasia were devoted grandparents, who moved to Santa Barbara in 1997, as soon as Nike Tooby Cosmides, their only grandchild, was born. George Cosmides is survived by Leda and Nike, his son-in-law John Tooby, his nieces and nephews James, Marian, Kathryn Ann, and John Cosmides, and his cousins Stella Plesko, Maritsa Pastis, George C. Cosmides, Lynne and Stefanie Leif, and Keith Pappas. He was predeceased by his parents, his beloved wife Nasia Murlas Cosmides, his brother Nicholas James Cosmides, Evelyn and Jordan Pappas, Constantine G. Cosmides, and James C. Cosmides.

 

A funeral service for George Cosmides will be held at 1:00 Sunday March 12 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101. George and Nasia will be interred together this summer at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC, with military honors.