Fink, George

views updated

FINK, George

PERSONAL:

Born in Vienna, Austria; son of John (an industrial chemist) and Therese (a cosmetician; maiden name, Weiss) Fink; married March 22, 1959; wife's name Ann (a social anthropologist); children: Naomi Fink Agmon, Jerome. Education: University of Mel-bourne, M.B., B.S., 1960, M.D., 1978; Oxford University, D.Phil., 1967. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Skiing, scuba diving.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Mental Health Research Institute, 155 Oak Rd., Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria 3052, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Oxford University, Oxford, England, university lecturer in physiology and medicine, 1971-80; Medical Research Council, Edinburgh, Scotland, director of Brain Metabolism Unit, 1980-99, honorary professor, 1984-99; Pharmos Corp., Rehobot, Israel, vice president for research, 1999-2003; Mental Health Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, director of psychiatric neuroscience, 2003—. Wellcome Trust, member of mental health panel, 1984-89.

MEMBER:

Society for Neuroscience, Endocrine Society, Physiological Society, Neuroendocrine Society (president, 1991-95), Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (fellow), Royal Society of Edinburgh (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Lifetime Achievement Award, International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2000; Commendation for Mental Health, British Medical Association, 2001, for Encyclopedia of Stress.

WRITINGS:

Neural-Endocrine Interactions, University of Melbourne (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1978.

(Editor, with L. Whalley) Neuropeptides: Basic and Clinical Aspects, Churchill Livingstone (New York, NY), 1982.

(Editor, with A. J. Harmar and K. W. McKerns) Neuroendocrine Molecular Biology, Plenum Publishing (New York, NY), 1986.

Basic and Clinical Aspects of Neurosciences: Transmitter Molecules in the Brain, Springer Verlag (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor, with A. J. Harmar) Neuropeptides: A Methodology, John Wiley and Sons (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor in chief) The Encyclopedia of Stress, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 2000.

Contributor to books. Contributor of more than 300 articles and reviews to scientific and scholarly journals, including Nature, Endocrinology, and Journal of Neuroscience. Member of editorial committee, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

The Encyclopedia of Stress, 2nd edition, for Elsevier Science (New York, NY), completion expected in 2005; Steroid Control of Brain Pituitary Function, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005; Estrogen, Elsevier Science (New York, NY), 2006; research on psychiatric neuroscience, with special reference to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic depression).

SIDELIGHTS:

George Fink told CA: "I am a neuro-scientist, neuropharmacologist, and neuroendocrinologist who has spent his life investigating brain function in normal and disordered states. The findings of my research and those of numerous other colleagues are the major drive for my written works. The Encyclopedia of Stress was an especially exciting project because it was the first in this area, and it was aimed at defining a concept or phenomenon which is blurred. The work also brought together subjects such as post-traumatic stress disorder, heart disease, and terrorism, which are of great current interest."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

British Medical Journal, May 12, 2001, Judy Sigel-Itzkovich, review of The Encyclopedia of Stress, p. 1187.