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