24
doc • Winter 2014
Kentucky
Making History
Albert J.
Stunkard, M.D.
Early pioneer in
obesity research
By Frank
Kourt,
Staff Writer
If you recognize
that obesity
often has far
more to do with genetics than
lack of willpower, that obese
people are no more or less neurotic that the rest of the population, and that most diet programs are statistically doomed
to failure, you may owe these
perceptions to the work of Dr.
Albert J. Stunkard, a psychiatrist who many recognize as the
father of obesity research.
Born to Horace Stunkard,
a professor of biology, and
Frances Klank Stunkard, a
librarian, on Feb. 7, 1922, in
Manhattan, he earned a bachelor of science degree from Yale
University, and then went on to
Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons, where
he earned his M.D. in 1945.
Stunkard did a fellowship in
psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
in the early 1950s. He then
accepted a faculty appointment at Cornell University
Medical College, which is