Great Minds in Despair: The Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1933 to 1989 (McGill-Queen's/AMS Healthcare Studies ... Health, and Society, 66) (Volume 66) - Hardcover

Stahnisch, Frank W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0228024595 ISBN 13: 9780228024590

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025

Synopsis

The twentieth century witnessed two devastating world wars that led to the exodus of millions of people. Counted among them were hundreds of neuroscientists and biological psychiatrists from Nazi Germany and its surrounding countries who were forced to emigrate in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them settled in North America, where they profoundly influenced the development of the biomedical sciences.

Focusing on the years between 1933 and 1989, Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of this forced migration on scientific and medical cultures in North America and on the researchers themselves. Frank Stahnisch traces the lives and careers of approximately four hundred German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. Placed in unfamiliar research settings in Canada and the United States, they helped to build the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, and the cognitive sciences, even as they rebuilt their own lives amid myriad challenges including cultural adaption and the complications of relicensing. Stahnisch explores how generational factors, gender, international networking, refugee organizations, and national funding agencies shaped their experiences and affected postwar remigration.

Great Minds in Despair provides an important revision to the brain gain thesis in migration studies by turning attention to the working conditions and social acculturation of an influential academic refugee group in North America.

About this title

About the Author

Frank W. Stahnisch is professor of history and holds the Alberta Medical Foundation / Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care at the University of Calgary.

From the Back Cover

Series editors: J.T.H. Connor and Erika Dyck

This series presents books in the history of medicine, health studies, and social policy, exploring interactions between the institutions, ideas, and practices of medicine and those of society as a whole. To begin to understand these complex relationships and their history is a vital step to ensuring the protection of a fundamental human right: the right to health. Volumes in this series have received financial support to assist publication from Associated Medical Services, Inc. (AMS), a Canadian charitable organization with an impressive history as a catalyst for change in Canadian healthcare. For eighty years, AMS has had a profound impact through its support of the history of medicine and the education of healthcare professionals, and by making strategic investments to address critical issues in our healthcare system. AMS has funded eight chairs in the history of medicine across Canada, is a primary sponsor of many of the country's history of medicine and nursing organizations, and offers fellowships and grants through the AMS History of Medicine and Healthcare Program (www.amshealthcare.ca).

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0228024595
• ISBN 13: 9780228024590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 660