SWHR Remembers Former Board Member Dr. Bruce McEwen
SWHR is saddened to learn of the death of former SWHR Board member Bruce McEwen, PhD, on January 2, 2020. McEwen was a distinguished neuroscientist and a pioneer in the study of how stress and sex hormones affect the brain.
In fact, on the day of his death, The Journal of Neuroscience published a review co-authored by McEwen on how our concept of stress and our understanding of how it affects emotion have changed over the past 50 years. His co-author, Huda Akil, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan Medical School, wrote in memory of McEwen: “His death marks the end of an era in affective neuroscience.”
“Many of the concepts we currently take for granted arose from his work,” she wrote, noting the “breathtaking sequence of foundational discoveries that Bruce and his colleagues have made over the decades, entirely reframing our thinking about this most basic of functions — coping with our environment.”
McEwen was the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor of Neuroscience at the Rockefeller University and Director of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology. He was also a past president of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
McEwen’s research on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of stress and sex hormones on the brain aligned with SWHR’s role as a thought leader promoting research on biological sex differences in health and disease.
When he joined SWHR’s Board in 2015, McEwen said, “I look forward to contributing to SWHR’s goal of transforming women’s health and adding my expertise in hormone actions and neurobiology to that which already exists in SWHR.”
McEwen was also involved in SWHR’s science program examining sex and gender differences in Alzheimer’s disease, saying that SWHR’s Interdisciplinary Network on Alzheimer’s Disease “fills an important gap” by addressing aging and dementia in the context of sex differences and how they are manifested across the life course.
Learn more about McEwen in this chapter in SfN’s The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography.
SWHR is saddened to learn of the death of former SWHR Board member Bruce McEwen, PhD, on January 2, 2020. McEwen was a distinguished neuroscientist and a pioneer in the study of how stress and sex hormones affect the brain.
In fact, on the day of his death, The Journal of Neuroscience published a review co-authored by McEwen on how our concept of stress and our understanding of how it affects emotion have changed over the past 50 years. His co-author, Huda Akil, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan Medical School, wrote in memory of McEwen: “His death marks the end of an era in affective neuroscience.”
“Many of the concepts we currently take for granted arose from his work,” she wrote, noting the “breathtaking sequence of foundational discoveries that Bruce and his colleagues have made over the decades, entirely reframing our thinking about this most basic of functions — coping with our environment.”
McEwen was the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor of Neuroscience at the Rockefeller University and Director of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology. He was also a past president of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
McEwen’s research on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of stress and sex hormones on the brain aligned with SWHR’s role as a thought leader promoting research on biological sex differences in health and disease.
When he joined SWHR’s Board in 2015, McEwen said, “I look forward to contributing to SWHR’s goal of transforming women’s health and adding my expertise in hormone actions and neurobiology to that which already exists in SWHR.”
McEwen was also involved in SWHR’s science program examining sex and gender differences in Alzheimer’s disease, saying that SWHR’s Interdisciplinary Network on Alzheimer’s Disease “fills an important gap” by addressing aging and dementia in the context of sex differences and how they are manifested across the life course.
Learn more about McEwen in this chapter in SfN’s The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography.