Jelliffe, Smith Ely (1866–1945)

US neurologist, psychoanalyst, editor, and author. He was clinical professor of mental diseases at Fordham University Medical School 1907–13. He began to practice Freudian psychoanalysis, eventually earning the sobriquet ‘father of psychosomatic medicine’. His greatest influence, however, probably came from his work as an editor and as coauthor of Diseases of the Nervous System 1915.

He was born in New York City. After starting out as a civil engineer, he switched to medicine, taking his MD in 1889; that same year he cofounded the important Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, becoming sole owner and managing editor 1902–45. He had also shown an interest in pharmacology, teaching it at the New York College of Pharmacy and editing the Journal of Pharmacology 1897–1901.