Ronald S. Duman, Ph.D., died unexpectedly of a heart attack on February 2, 2020 while hiking near his home in Guilford, CT. Dr. Duman was 65 years old. At the time of his death, he was the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities of the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He also played a central role in the National PTSD Brain Bank and the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and recipient of two of the most prestigious prizes for mood disorders research, the Colvin Prize of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the Anna-Monika Foundation Prize. Dr. Duman served on the Council of the ACNP from 2012 to 2014 and was a member of the Editorial Board of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Dr. Duman grew up in a loving and lively household of seven children in Ebensburg, PA. A varsity middle linebacker, and a lifelong Pittsburgh Steelers fan, he graduated from The College of William and Mary in 1976. He then worked for several years in the Biology Department at The University of Notre Dame, after which he completed his Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology with Dr. Sam J. Enna at The University of Texas in Houston. In 1986, he joined the laboratory of Dr. John Tallman at Yale as a postdoctoral fellow, joined the faculty 2 years later, and spent his entire professional career at Yale University, where he launched the Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry along with Dr. Eric J. Nestler, one of the first research programs in the world to focus on the molecular and cellular biology of psychiatric disorders. Every person who knew Ron viewed him as a uniquely kind, honest, generous, humble, and thoughtful man.

The Duman laboratory focused on identifying fundamental neurobiological mechanisms underlying the effects of stress on the brain. He was a pioneer in identifying how antidepressant treatments reverse structural changes produced by stress in both animal models and studies of human post-mortem brain tissue. Dr. Duman is well known for proposing the neurotrophic hypothesis of antidepressant response, identifying deficits in growth factor signaling after chronic or severe stress and the restoration of this signaling by antidepressant treatments. He demonstrated that antidepressants induce adult neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus, and he was the first to identify mTOR signaling and rapid dendritic spine dynamics in prefrontal cortex as key signaling mechanisms responsible for the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine. Dr. Duman’s scientific legacy will live on through the many dozens of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows he mentored and who viewed him as their scientific father.

Dr. Duman is survived by his wife, neuroscientist Dr. Catharine Duman whom he met at Yale and married in 1988, and their two daughters, Katie Duman and Carolyn Duman.