Everett Ellinwood, 73, died suddenly on January 8, 2008. He was a Fellow and past Councilor of ACNP, having been elected to the College in 1976.

Everett graduated with an MD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1959, and he completed his psychiatry residency at Carolina in 1963. During that time Everett published two early research papers. He then served in the US Public Health Service from 1963 to 1965 as Chief of the Addiction Service for the military. This experience led to the field of addiction becoming his lifelong focus.

Following military service, Major Ellinwood joined Duke as a research fellow. He joined the Duke faculty in 1967, rising to the rank of Professor of Psychiatry in 1973 and Professor of Pharmacology in 1980. Everett's seminal publications on amphetamine psychosis appeared between 1967 and 1974. These contained pioneering insights that remain valid today, and today's advances rest on many of Everett's ideas. His citation classics include his 1967 description of amphetamine psychosis, and a 2001 description of apoptotic mechanisms in methamphetamine neurotoxicity.

Ever a curious and divergent thinker, Everett maintained an astonishing range of scientific interests. He studied the phenomenology and mechanisms of stimulant drug abuse and psychosis, and the neuropsychopharmacology of arousal, cognition and psychomotor performance. He pioneered pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic studies of drug effects on cognitive and neuromotor function. He also pioneered the interactive use of computers in cognitive neuromotor assessments. He pioneered early versions of computer-based psychiatric interviews. He collaborated with Duke clinicians on the neuropsychopharmacology of eating disorders.

Integrating his clinical practice and basic research, Everett was a pioneer of ‘translational medicine.’ His clinical perspicacity guided his preclinical research projects. He understood and provided empirical evidence that psychostimulant abuse is a dysfunctional process, based on the integrated sequencing of individual mechanisms. In 2002, he demonstrated in intact animals that psychostimulant sensitization and self-administration can be directly reversed (not prevented or blocked) by ‘therapeutic’ induction of an acute withdrawal state and subsequent blockade of the ensuing aversive stress responses. It is remarkable that he was at the leading edge of the new converging consensus that reactivation of an otherwise stable consolidated memory and disruption of its reconsolidation (induction and blockade of aversive responses) might provide a means to ‘erase’ the memory and thus to achieve a desired therapeutic outcome.

For many years, Everett's laboratory was the core of biological psychiatry at Duke. A committed teacher and an unselfish mentor, Everett guided generations of medical students, psychiatry residents, research fellows, and junior faculty members through their first steps in research. One Ellinwood protégé is Duke's current chairman of Psychiatry, Ranga Krishnan.

In addition to his research programs, Everett was always available to counsel and treat colleagues struggling with addictive disorders. In the world of clinical practice there was no shortage of such patients. They knew they could come to Everett for confidential and effective help.

Everett served us in many capacities. He was President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry and Councilor of ACNP. He was a consultant to several Task Forces of the American Psychiatric Association. He served 5 years on the APA Research Council. He was Chairman of the FDA Drug Scheduling Advisory Committee; Chairman of the Drug Abuse Research Review Committee for NIDA; he served on the ADAMHA AIDS Advisory Committee and on the NIMH Research Scientist Development Review Committee.

Everett and his devoted partner, Cackie Joyner, loved life and the life of science, and they will be sorely missed around ACNP annual meetings. Contributions may be made to the WJ Kenneth Rockwell, MD Research Endowment Fund for the Investigation of Eating Disorders at Duke University Medical Center.