Sarnoff A. Mednick

Who is Sarnoff A. Mednick?

Professor Sarnoff Mednick, Ph.D., Dr. Med pioneered the prospective high-risk longitudinal study to investigate the etiology of psychopathology or mental disorders. His emphasis was on schizophrenia but he has also made significant contributions to the study of creativity, psychopathy, alcoholism, and suicide in schizophrenia. He is a Professor Emeritus at The University of Southern California where he has been a tenured professor since the early '70s and remains highly active though in his eighties. Dr. Mednick was the first scientist to revisit the genetic basis of mental disorders following the backlash against genetics following the era of eugenics. He was the recipient of the Joseph Zubin Award in 1996 and had over 300 peer-reviewed publications on the topic.

He received his Ph.D. at Northwestern University, where he was a student of Benton J. Underwood. Mednick began his career as a professor at Harvard University, then took a position at the University of Michigan where he was best known for his verbal learning experiments and other cross-sectional studies, and for his theorizing on creativity, psychopathy, and schizophrenia.