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Prof. Joel Elkes
From the citation on the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, of the Hebrew University to Joel Elkes conferred on June 26th, 1989.
Professor Joel Elkes, Scientific Associate of the Academy of Psychoanalysis, Charter Fellow of Britain's Royal College of Psychiatry, and Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is an acknowledged founder of the science of psychopharmacology. He engaged in unprecedented psychiatric work before the term "experimental psychiatry" even existed, and through his own activities begun more than 30 years ago, he helped to revolutionize the entire methodology of the mentally ill.
Beginning his scientific life in Britain in physical chemistry, Joel Elkes continued by way of neuropharmacology and neurochemistry into research on the influence of drugs on electrochemical events in the brain - work that ultimately led to the field now known as psychopharmacology. During a long and distinguished career in Britain, the United States and Israel, he founded research organizations that are today among the most highly respected bodies of their kind.
A trailblazer in the area of social psychiatry and a preeminent researcher in a range of scientific and health- related areas. Joel Elkes helped to substantiate the link between self-awareness and the state of health and wellbeing. A scholar and a teacher, he has trained some of the most brilliant investigative minds of our time, and has significantly helped further the training of academic leadership in science.