Children 2 | Nationality United States | |
 | ||
Institutions Sociomedical Sciences and Psychiatry at Columbia University and Department of Epidemiology of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute Fields Social medicine, Epidemiology | ||
Denise kandel phd and eric kandel md presenting at nobel conference 51
Denise Kandel ( [ˈkandəl]; née Bystryn; born February 27, 1933) is an American medical sociologist and epidemiologist. She is known for her epidemiological longitudinal studies on the sequence of first-time use of various legal and illegal drugs, carried out from the 1970s until the present time (written 2016).
Contents
Denise kandel phd and eric kandel md q a at nobel conference 51
Background and family
Kandel was born to Jewish parents who emigrated in the 1920s, before knowing each other, from eastern Poland to France to attend university. Her father Iser Bystryn (1901–1954) studied in Caen and became chief engineer in a truck factory near Paris. Her mother Sara Wolsky Bystryn (1906–2003) had to abandon her plans to study in Paris for financial reasons and learned making hats and corsets. Denise Kandel was born two years after the marriage (1930) of her parents. She had a younger brother, Jean-Claude Bystryn (1938–2010), who became a known American dermatologist and scientist at the NYU Langone Medical Center. Both parents were fluent in French, but spoke Yiddish at home.
In France up to 1949
The family lived in Colombes near Paris and Denise attended a primary school for girls (Ecole des Filles). The children grew up secularly, the family never went to synagogue, and they had presents at Christmas. In 1941, when Denise was eight, and one year after the German invasion of France during the Second World War, Denise’s father was arrested as "foreign Jew" and interned approximately 100 km south of Paris in the Nazi Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp. After some time he succeeded in fleeing to Cahors in south-western France, where could also meet his family again. While the parents – separated from each other – had to hide at changing places, the children found more stable shelter. Denise could stay as pupil in the convent Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc of Cahors until spring 1944, when she had to flee even from there and then lived with a family near Toulouse. In 1949 her family emigrated to the USA.
In the USA since 1949
Denise attended the Lycée Français de New York, where she received the Baccalauréat after one year. Already at the age of 17 she was accepted by the Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, where she graduated within two years for financial reasons. She then returned to New York to become a PhD student at Columbia University. Her tutor was Robert K. Merton and she wrote a thesis in Medical sociology about the subject how medical students decide on their professional specialization. During this time she also met neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel, future recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They married in 1956 and had two children.
Scientific work
When in the 1960s research on drug misuse gained in importance, Denise Kandel applied to join a research team that intended to investigate drug use among highschool students. She assumed she could contribute with her research experience concerning the influence of parents and peer groups on adolescents. However, she was rejected, because she wanted to interview both parents and students and the research team feared that this might undermine the cooperation of students. After that Kandel developed her own research project, which ultimately led to an influential longitudinal study of 1,325 persons. Later looking back, she considered this work as a turning point in her career.
The main subject of this and further similar investigations was the sequence of first-time use of various legal and illegal drugs. Her research in this area found a strong resonance in scientific and political discussions, and the catchphrases "stepping-stone theory" (used since the 1930s) and "gateway hypothesis" (used since the 1980s) were associated with her name, though often misleadingly. Contrary to many others, Kandel always emphasized the difference between sequence and causation in the first-time use of different substances. Both may – but need not – be coupled, a question which is investigated in further research, particularly in physiological experiments.
Denise Kandel is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Psychiatry at Columbia University and Head of the Department of Epidemiology of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.