James F. Leckman
American Tourette syndrome researcher
James Frederick Leckman is an American child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Psychology and Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, recognized for his research in Tourette syndrome (TS) and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).
Personal life and education
Leckman obtained degrees in chemistry and philosophy from the College of Wooster in 1969, and his MD from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1973. He obtained his PhD in clinical science from the University of São Paulo in 2014.
Leckman is married to Hannah Hone Leckman; they have two children.
Career
After interning in San Francisco at the United States Public Health Service Marine Hospital for two years (1973–1974), Leckman worked at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in adult psychiatry (1974–1976), before completing his residency in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine in 1979.
At Yale since 1979, he took several sabbaticals to study elsewhere, including a 1998 study of animal behavior at the University of Cambridge. He was Director of Research for the Yale Child Study Center (1983–2010), where his interests include the study of the interplay between genetic and epigenetic factors in human development and Darwinism in psychopathology.
Leckman is an international leader in Tourette syndrome research, and as of 2025, was the highest publisher on the topic. His 1998 paper "Course of tic severity in Tourette syndrome: the first two decades" was among the top four most influential papers on TS as of 2025. By July 2018, his 1995 family study on obsessive–compulsive disorder was the second most cited article on the disorder.
“James F. Leckman” enters the record as american Tourette syndrome researcher. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Leckman and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6133669. VIAF identifies the subject as 44390371. The Library of Congress control number is n85312984. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1973, 2014 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “James F. Leckman” 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.