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Bruce S. McEwen

Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D., is the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor and Head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University.

McEwen grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, and graduated from the University High School in 1955.

He graduated Summa Cum Laude in Chemistry from Oberlin College in 1959 and obtained his Ph.D. in Cell Biology in 1964 from The Rockefeller University.

He returned to Rockefeller in 1966 to work with the psychologist, Prof. Neal Miller, after postdoctoral studies in neuobiology in Sweden and a brief period on the faculty at the University of Minnesota.

He was appointed as Professor at Rockefeller in 1981.

He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.

He served as Dean of Graduate Studies from 1991-3 and as President of the Society for Neuroscience in 1997-98.

As a neuroscientist and neuroendocrinologist, McEwen studies environmentally-regulated, variable gene expression in brain mediated by circulating steroid hormones and endogenous neurotransmitters in relation to brain sexual differentiation and the actions of sex, stress and thyroid hormones on the adult brain.

His laboratory discovered adrenal steroid receptors in the hippocampus in 1968. His laboratory combines molecular, anatomical, pharmacological, physiological and behavioral methodologies and relates their findings to human clinical information.

He is a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, in which he is helping to reformulate concepts and measurements related to stress and stress hormones in the context of human societies.

He is the co-author of a book for a lay audience with science writer Harold M Schmeck, Jr, called The Hostage Brain, published by Rockefeller University Press in 1994, and another book with science writer Elizabeth N. Lasley called “The End of Stress as We Know It” published by the Joseph Henry Press and the Dana Press in 2002.

Honorary Sc.D. degree: Oberlin College, 2000
President’s Award, American Psychosomatic Society, 2001
Dale Medal, British Endocrine Society, 2001
Lifetime Achievement Award, International Soc. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2001
Archibald Byron Macallum Lectureship, Dept. Physiology, U. Toronto, 2002
Edward J. Sachar Award, Dept. Psychiatry, Columbia University, 2002
Father John O’Sullivan Award, McMaster University, 2003
Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, American Psychological Association, 2003
Honorary ScD degree, University of Michigan, 2005
Karl Spencer Lashley Award, American Phiilosophical Society, 2005
Pat Goldman Rakic Award, NARSAD, 2005
Pasarow Award in Psychiatry, Pasarow Foundation, 2006

Member of the Scientific Committee of the Collège International de Recherche Servier