Alan I. Leshner
American psychologist
Alan Leshner is an American psychologist who served as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health, has held senior positions at the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the National Science Board.
Education
Leshner received an undergraduate degree with Honors in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College in 1965. He earned an M.S. in physiological psychology from Rutgers University in 1967, and a Ph.D. degree in physiological psychology from Rutgers in 1969.
Academia
Leshner spent 10 years at Bucknell University, where he was Professor of Psychology. He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in Budapest, Hungary, at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
He is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior, and has published over 200 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on the biology of behavior, science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.
Public service
Leshner served as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994 to 2001. One of the scientific institutes of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIDA supports over 85 percent of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.
Before becoming director of NIDA, Leshner was the deputy director and acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He went to NIMH from the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, science policy and science education.
“Alan I. Leshner” enters the record as american psychologist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alan, Leshner and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Alan I. Leshner” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Alan, Leshner and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4706929. VIAF identifies the subject as 3722579. The Library of Congress control number is n77008178. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1967, 1969 and 1994.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Alan I. Leshner”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Alan I. Leshner primary sources, Alan I. Leshner archive and Alan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alan I. Leshner”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Alan I. Leshner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.