Alexander H. Leighton

Who was Alexander H. Leighton?

Alexander "Alec" H. Leighton was a sociologist and psychiatrist of dual citizenship. He is best known for his work on the Stirling County Study and his contributions to the field of psychiatric epidemiology.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received a B.A. degree from Princeton University in 1932, an M.S. from Cambridge University in England in 1934, and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1936. In 1945 and 1947 he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships. From 1946 to 1966 he was full professor in the Cornell University Department of Sociology and Anthropology. During this time he also taught at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations and at the Cornell Medical School in New York. He left Cornell to work at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was Professor of Social Psychiatry and Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences until 1975. He left Harvard to become the Canadian National Health Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he stayed for 10 years.