Russell D. Fernald is an American neuroscientist/neuroethologist, currently on the Biology faculty at Stanford University. Fernald is known for his interdisciplinary work based on fieldwork and subsequent neuroethological analysis of an African cichlid fish that he has shown to be a useful and novel model organism. His research spans several domains: 1) in the visual system including the discovery of rod photoreceptor stem cells, circadian renewal of photoreceptor opsins and mechanisms of crystalline lens focus (Rank Prize); 2) In social control of reproductive behavior: social regulation of reproduction via gonadotropin releasing hormones through specific brain circuitry; 3) Cognitive skills that have evolved to regulate social status. Early life Russ Fernald was born in Chuquicamata, Chile to American parents, Catherine and Russell G. Fernald where his father was a mining engineer, working at the Anaconda Company open pit mine. Fernald returned to the U.S. when he was ~3 and grew up in a western suburb of Chicago where he attended public schools. He was attracted to biology by foraging in local swamps and was one of a handful of his high school classmates who went to college. Career Fernald attended Swarthmore College where he received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1963. He then completed his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 where he worked with Professor George Gerstein. He was supported by the Ford Foundation and studied the neurobiology of the cat cochlear nucleus using single cell recording and modeling the data. In 1969, he moved to Munich, Germany where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck für Psychiatrie in Munich with Dr. O. Creutzfeldt, until 1971. In this position, together with Ronald Chase, he developed a novel technique for aligning and focusing the eyes of experimental animals. In 1971 Fernald moved to the Max-Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology where he worked with Nobel Laureate, Dr. Konrad Lorenz in Seewiesen, Germany. His research was on quantitative behavioral analyses of bird and fish behavior and he began African field work on cichlid fish during that time. He then returned to the US where he joined the faculty of the University of Oregon (1976–1990), rising through the ranks to full professor and becoming the director of the Neuroscience Institute. During this time, he was an NIH Fogarty Senior International Fellow at the Medical Research Council in London (1985–86). In 1990, Fernald moved to Stanford where he