Leon Eisenberg - Timeline of Leon Eisenberg's Life and Achievements

Timeline of Leon Eisenberg's Life and Achievements

This needs some 'period' work to show the shifting themes of his professional and social interests and the periods of his various contributions.

• 1922 - Born in Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants
• 1934-1939 Attended Olney High School, Philadelphia PA.
• 1938-1939 - Editor of Olney High School newspaper
• 1939 - Graduation from Olney High School, Philadelphia PA; won a Mayor’s Scholarship to College (based on the College Entrance Board Examinations).
• 1942 - Leo Kanner identified 11 boys with unusual constellation of traits—extreme social isolation, an inability to look people in the eye, a preoccupation with objects and ritual, and hand-flicking and other repetitive movements.
• 1944 - AB - College of University of Pennsylvania (nearly straight As)
• 1944 - Applied to medical schools with nearly straight A’s in college; turned down by all those schools; University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine accepts him after intervention by Pennsylvania legislator on behalf of outstanding student Leon Eisenberg.
• 1946 - Graduated valedictorian of his medical school class but denied (along with the seven other Jews who applied) an internship at the University of Pennsylvania hospital; went to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City instead
• 1946 - MD - University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
• 1946 1947 - Rotating Intern, Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York City (discovered psychiatry)
• 1947-1948 - Instructor in Physiology, University of Pennsylvania
• 1948-1950 - Instructor in Basic Science Program, Walter Reed Hospital
• 1948-1950 - Captain, Medical Corps, U.S. Army
• 1950 1952 - Psychiatric Resident, Sheppard Pratt Hospital, Towson, MD.
• 1952 1954 - Fellow in Child Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD - works with the great psychiatrist, Leo Kanner. Eisenberg would join him in his exploration of the newly identified psychiatric disorder, autism, paying special attention to the social, and especially, the family setting of the children in which it appeared. Becomes Kanner's protégé: his doubts about psychoanalysis were encouraged by Leo Kanner
• 1953-1955 - Instructor in Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University
• 1955 (Dec) - Certified in Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
• 1958-1961 - Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University (Became Chief of Child Psychiatry 2 years before actual promotion to full Professor)
• 1959 - Became Chief of Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins upon the retirement of Leo Kanner (became Full Professor 2 years later, in 1961)
• 1959-1967 - Chief of Child Psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins Hospital
• 1960 (May) - Certified in Child Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
• 1961-1967 - Professor of Child Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University
• 1962 - Eisenberg launched the first randomized clinical trial of a psychiatric medicine (childhood clinical psychopharmacology)
• 1967 - AM (Hon) Harvard University
• 1967-1974 - Chief, Psychiatric Services, Massachusetts General Hospital
• 1967 - only months after arriving to chair the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, Eisenberg was asked to join a small committee, including HMS Professors Jon Beckwith, Ed Kravitz, and David Potter, that was pushing to increase the number of African-American students at the Medical School.
• 1967-1993 - Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• 1969 - first HMS entering class to include black students, who had been recruited through the efforts of Eisenberg and his colleagues
• 1973 - DSc (Hon) University of Manchester, England
• 1973-1980 - Chairman, Executive Committee, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• 1974-1977 - Member, Board of Consultation, Massachusetts General Hospital
• 1974-1980 - Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• 1974-1992 - Senior Associate in Psychiatry, Children's Hospital Medical Center
• 1977-2009 - Honorary Psychiatrist, Massachusetts General Hospital
• 1980-1991 - Chairman, Department of Social Medicine and Health Policy, Harvard Medical School (invited by then HMS Dean Daniel Tosteson)
• 1980-1993 - Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine
• 1987 - Named Senior Fellow of the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, later to become the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University, for which a partial history is outlined on their website.
• 1991 - DSc (Hon) - University of Massachusetts
• 1992-2009 - Honorary Senior Staff Psychiatrist, Children's Hospital, Boston
• 1993 - Retirement from Harvard Medical School (then mandatory); becomes Professor Emeritus; continues to serve actively
• 1993-2009 - Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School
• 2009 - Leon Eisenberg Chair of Child Psychiatry named at Children's Hospital Boston.
• 2009 - Death at home (September 15)