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Robert H. Belmaker

Robert H. Belmaker is an Israeli psychiatrist and professor emeritus at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, known for research on lithium, bipolar disorder and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

born 1947Research on lithium and bipolar disorderTranscranial magnetic stimulation for depressionBiological psychiatry in Israel

Born: 8 July 1947, Los Angeles
Occupation: psychiatrist, academic
Education: Duke University School of Medicine, Harvard College

Robert H. Belmaker was born in 1947 in Los Angeles

Belmaker was born in 1947 in Los Angeles to a Jewish family. Most of his father's family died in the Holocaust at Treblinka. The family later moved to Brooklyn and then to Florida, where he finished high school.

He earned a BA from Harvard College in 1967 and an MD from Duke in 1971. He trained in psychiatry and neurology at Duke. From 1972 to 1974 he was a clinical fellow at the US National Institute of Mental Health, where he studied identical twins in search of biological markers for schizophrenia.

He moved to Israel in 1974 and set up a research and clinical department at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1986 he joined the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was deputy director of the Beersheba Mental Health Center from 1994 to 2012.

His research covered how lithium works in bipolar disorder, the genetics of temperament, and transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for depression. He was president of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology from 2008 to 2010 and of the Israel Psychiatric Association from 2015 to 2018. In 2023 he published a psychopharmacology textbook with Pesach Lichtenberg.