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David Hamburg

International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Experience

David Hamburg is President Emeritus of Carnegie Corporation of New York, after having been President from 1983-97.  He received his A.B. (1944) and his M.D. (1947) degrees from Indiana University.  He was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences from 1961-72 and Reed-Hodgson professor of Human Biology at Stanford University from 1972-76; President of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1975-80; Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, 1980-83.  He served as President then Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1984-86).

Dr. Hamburg is the author of Today’s Children: Creating a Future for a Generation in Crisis, (1992).  He was chairman of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, which completed its decade long study with a report entitled Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century. 

Under Dr. Hamburg’s leadership, Carnegie Corporation played an active role in reducing nuclear danger, moved toward the resolution of the Cold War, and worked toward democracy in South Africa. In 1994, he established the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Conflict, which he co-chaired with Cyrus Vance. The Commission and the Carnegie Corporation published seventy-five reports and books on subjects related to prevention and sponsored international meetings drawing together independent experts and policy makers from around the world.  The commission published a synthesis of these activities under the title, Preventing Deadly Conflict.

In addition to his new book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict, Dr. Hamburg and his wife, Betty, are completing a book for Oxford University Press that will be published later this year, Learning to Live Together.

Dr. Hamburg has served on various boards, including Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai-New York University Medical Center, the American Museum of Natural History, the Carter Center, the Leakey Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation of Zurich, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Peace Academy, the Project on Ethnic Relations, and the New York Academy of Medicine. 

He has served on many policy advisory boards, including the Defense Policy Board. In science policy, he has served as chairman of several national and international groups. From 1994 to 2001, he served on the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, the White House. He is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow for International Activities of The National Academies of Sciences. 

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He is the past president of the Academy for Research in Behavioral Medicine, the International Society for Research on Aggression, and the Association for Research on Nervous and Mental Disorders.  

Dr. Hamburg received the American Psychiatric Association’s Distinguished Service Award, the International Peace Academy’s 25th Anniversary Special Award, the Achievement in Children and Public Policy Award from the Society for Research in Child Development, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (its highest award), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.