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Dr. M. Ralph Kaufman (1900-1977) was the first Chairman and Professor of Psychology at Mount Sinai Hospital and the first Esther and Joseph Klingenstein Professor of Psychiatry. He was also the Dean of the Page and William Black Post Graduate School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Dr. Kaufman was born in Bessarabia, Russia, and emigrated to Canada with his mother in 1905. In 1925, he received his medical degree from McGill University. He then interned at the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island. From 1926 to 1927, he studied neurology at Montefiore Hospital in New York. From there, he trained at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and was a Commonwealth Fund Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. From 1931 to 1933, he was the Clinical Director of McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. Then from 1933 until 1945, he was an attending Neuropsychiatrist of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Additionally, Dr. Kaufman was a founding member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society.
From 1942 until 1945, he was in the Army Medical Corps as a consultant in neuropsychiatry to the Surgeon General of the Department of the Army and Executive Officer of the Army School Psychiatry in the Pacific during World War II. He was discharged as a colonel in 1945 and received many medals for his time in the Army.
In 1945, Dr. Kaufman became the first Chief of Mount Sinai’s Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Kaufman established a liaison program at Mount Sinai Hospital, assigning a Liaison Psychiatrist to each of the services and outpatient clinics, which became a model for other hospitals throughout the country, and “in its day, Kaufman’s psychiatry program served as a model for the evolution of general hospital psychiatry at its best.”1 Dr. Kaufman was also deeply involved in the creation of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and along with the other full-time department directors, he worked to convince the hospital leadership to establish the Mount Sinai Medical School. In 1964, Dr. Kaufman was awarded the Jacobi Medal Awarded by the Mount Sinai Alumni. In 1968, he became the first Esther and Joseph Klingenstein Professor of Psychiatry, before retiring in 1970. During his time at Mount Sinai, he had been the President of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1949-1951) and the Vice President of the American Psychiatric Association (1963-1964). After his death in 1977, Dr. Kaufman was still honored and awarded posthumously.
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Biographical note by Lily Stowe-Alekman in Summer 2020.
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"M.Ralph Kaufman, Chief Psychiatrist for Mount Sinai.” New York Times, May 21, 1977. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/21/archives/m-ralph-kaufman-chief-psychiatrist-for-mount-sinai.html
Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. "Kaufman, M. Ralph.” BPSI Archives Collection Index. https://bpsi.org/library/archives/collections/kaufman-m-ralph-1900-1977/
Aufses, Arthur H., Jr., and Niss, Barbara. This House of Noble Deeds: The Mount Sinai Hospital, 1852-2002. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Accessed July 21, 2020.
Niss, Barbara J., and Aufses, Arthur H., Jr.. Teaching Tomorrow's Medicine Today: The Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 1963-2003. New York: New York University Press, 2005.