Winokur, George

   (pronounced [WIN-o-kerv])

   (1925–1996)

   An important student of the genetics of mood disorders, Winokur was born in Philadelphia, received his M.D. from the University of Maryland in 1947, and trained in psychiatry from 1948 to 1950 at the Seton Institute in Baltimore. Winokur came to Washington University in St. Louis in 1951 as an instructor in the psychiatry department and remained there until becoming chair of psychiatry in 1971 at the University of Iowa. At Iowa, as Raymond Crowe (1942–) puts it, "He built a department based on the Washington University model: psychiatry was a medical science founded on empirical data, not opinion and anecdote" (obituary, Psychiatric Genetics, 1998, p. 128). Winokur became known for his efforts to put psychiatric genetics on a sound empirical footing, and in 1969 he published a landmark book, Manic Depressive Illness. Beginning in 1974, in an article in International Pharmacopsychiatry, he distinguished among "pure" depression (someone with an affective disorder in the family), "spectrum" depression (someone with any disorder in the family), and "sporadic" depression (no mental illness in the family). Out of Winokur’s work with Ming T. Tsuang (1931–), who had come with Winokur from St. Louis to Iowa, came in 1996 the Natural History of Mania, Depression and Schizophrenia, based on the Iowa "follow-up" study. Winokur is also known for his work with Guze and Robins on the "St. Louis criteria," Feighner being first author.