Robert Waldinger, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of its Grant Study, joined the Harvard Club of Boston on May 30th to speak on “What Science Can Teach Us About the Good Life: Lessons from the 80-Year-Long Harvard Study of Adult Development.” The Grant Study has been examining the lives of two groups of men using a variety of measures, and Dr. Waldinger is now introducing new neuroscience ones to better understand how life experience and neurobiology interact to foster healthy aging. An outstanding thinker and communicator, Professor Waldinger’s 2014 TED talk on the Study has garnered over 20,140,000 views.

Dr. Waldinger received his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he teaches HMS students and psychiatry residents. He also serves as Director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Psychodynamic Therapy and Research and on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous scientific papers as well as two books: Psychiatry for Medical Students (American Psychiatric Press, 1984, 1991, 1997), and Effective Psychotherapy with Borderline Patients: Case Studies (Macmillan, 1987).