In Memoriam: Dr. Esther Helen Strauss

Abstract

Dr. Esther Strauss was a neuropsychologist, clinician, researcher, teacher, mentor, and friend to many of us in neuropsychology. She passed away peacefully on June 17, 2009, from ovarian cancer, surrounded by her family.

Dr. Strauss was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Victoria, where she was core clinical faculty for the Clinical Neuropsychology program, and where she was a PhD supervisor for many students who later went on to have clinical, research, and teaching careers in neuropsychology. She was a Fellow of the National Academy of Neuropsychology and of the American Psychological Association. She was on the board of editors of several neuropsychology journals, including the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, Neuropsychologia, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, and Child Neuropsychology. Dr. Strauss also served on several grant review committees, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She authored over a hundred scientific papers and book chapters and had a published neuropsychological test (the Victoria Symptom Validity Test). Her research spanned many domains in neuropsychology and included a number of collaborations from very early on. Her very first publication in the field of neuropsychology was on haptic memory in Korsakoff's disease in 1978; she went on to publish work on cerebral lateralization (of emotional functioning, speech, and on the crowding hypothesis and cerebral organization), epilepsy (including papers on hemispherectomy, callosotomy, and temporal lobectomy), head injury, malingering, aging, and, more recently, cognitive speed and inconsistency over the lifespan and within specific neurological conditions. Throughout this time, Dr. Strauss also published regularly on psychometrics, specifically on the psychometric properties, validity, and sensitivity of neuropsychological tests.

Dr. Strauss established a number of longstanding, successful collaborations over the years with many fellow neuropsychologists and researchers. She was a wonderful collaborator — she brought scientific curiosity, initiative, and enthusiasm to new projects and was engaging, interested, and hard working. Because of her warm personal manner, many of her research collaborations turned into lifelong friendships. Behind the scenes, in addition to supervising neuropsychology graduate students for almost 30 years at the University of Victoria and maintaining a productive research career, Dr. Strauss also had a busy private practice where she conducted medicolegal neuropsychological evaluations. She was also, throughout her entire career, a devoted wife and mother, raising three children and maintaining a welcoming home that was always open to friends and family. To graduate students, Dr. Strauss was a supportive, warm supervisor who expected the best, and her students were productive in research despite the high clinical demands of the program. She was an outstanding and devoted mentor for many students; all of whom owe a great deal of their success to her.

Dr. Strauss is most well known for authoring the Compendium of Neuropsychological Tests, which, in its third edition, remains a key reference text in the field (Strauss, Sherman, & Spreen, 2006). The first edition of the book (Spreen & Strauss, 1991) was one of the very first reference books designed for neuropsychologists on test norms, reliability, and validity and was soon ranked as one of the 10 most essential books in the field (Ryan & Bohac, 1996). The second edition was equally well received (Spreen & Strauss, 1998) and soon found itself ranked in the top two books used by neuropsychologists (Sullivan & Ryan, 2004). For the third edition, Dr. Strauss took the lead as first author. Reviews for the book stated that it was “an invaluable reference” (Cahill, 2007, p. 219), “a mature work of outstanding scholarship” (Hughes, 2006, pp. 914–915), and “a splendid and magnificent achievement” (Carone, 2007, pp. 62–63). Although she was always characteristically humble and avoidant of the spotlight, she was extremely proud of her work on the Compendium, achieved through many tireless hours devoted to reviewing countless articles and test manuals.

Dr. Strauss obtained a BA in psychology and sociology at McGill University in 1969, followed by an MA in sociology from Northeastern University in 1971 and an MA in special education from Boston University in 1972. She then worked at the Aphasia Research Center at the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital until 1976 with eminent neuropsychology pioneers Drs. Edith Kaplan, Norman Geshwind, and Harold Goodglass, where her passion for neuropsychology was born. She then completed a PhD at the University of Toronto under the supervision of another prominent researcher in neuropsychology, Professor Morris Moscovitch, who later became a dear friend. She joined the faculty of the University of Victoria in 1979, attaining the rank of full professor in 1991. When Dr. Strauss joined the faculty, the University of Victoria neuropsychology program included leaders in the field such as Professors Otfried Spreen, Louis Costa, Paul Satz, Bill Gaddes, Don Read, Frank Spellacy, and Roger Graves, among others, and hosted annual workshops with prominent speakers including Drs. Arthur Benton, Antonio Damasio, Larry Squire, Morris Moskovitch, Frank Benson, Brenda Milner, and Luke Teuber. Shortly after arriving at the University of Victoria, and in her classic, easy style of creating collaborations, Dr. Strauss established a long and highly successful research collaboration with Professor Juhn Wada of the University of British Columbia medical school, one of the great pioneers in the field of epilepsy. Her work with him focused on a number of areas, including lateralization of cognitive functions such as emotions and language and the effects of surgical treatments for intractable seizure disorders.

Dr. Strauss's work with Dr. Wada eventually led to collaborations with a number of other prominent neuropsychologists working in the area of epilepsy across North America, including, among others, Drs. Gordon Chelune, Bruce Hermann, David Loring, Bill Barr, Ken Perrine, Michael Westerveld, and Max Trenerry. Eventually, a semiformal collaborative group, the Bozeman Consortium, was formed, named after the very first collaborative research meeting in Bozeman, Montana. The Bozeman meetings were lively and productive events that always involved a stimulating mix of good science, good conversation, and good wine and that led to a number of important publications in the field of epilepsy.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Dr. Strauss became involved in research on malingering and, together with a number of her students including Dr. Daniel Slick, had continued to publish regularly in this field. Among her accomplishments in this area was coauthorship of the Victoria Symptom Validity Test (Slick, Hopp, Strauss & Thompson, 1997), which has become one of the more popular measures of this type in current use.

More recently, Dr. Strauss had been focusing a considerable portion of her research efforts on the neuropsychology of aging. In collaboration with her dear friends and colleagues at the University of Victoria, Professors David Hultsch and Michael Hunter, she developed Project MIND (Mental Inconsistency in Normals and Demented) that focused on inconsistency in mental functioning as a possible important predictor of later decline in performance, particularly progression to a diagnosis of dementia.

In addition to her impressive career accomplishments, Dr. Strauss was a devoted wife and mother to her three children, often referring to the latter as her greatest achievement in life. That she managed to successfully raise three children while teaching, supervising, developing multiple research programs, and working towards tenure in an era without maternity or parental leave is a sign of her strength of character and of her innate resourcefulness; she did this with grace, humor, and steadfastness. She was incredibly hard working and uncomplaining and could always see humor and opportunity even in the most difficult times; she was always a champion and support to those she held dear.

Although she lived and worked in Victoria, a picturesque city of cherry blossoms on the Pacific Coast, Dr. Strauss was born and raised in Montreal and, like most Montrealers, always loved returning to her home city even though she had enjoyed a rich social life in Victoria with fellow faculty, friends, and family. She had taken up painting in the last few years, which she found both comical and interesting, and was always well travelled, visiting Ghana, Portugal, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Peru, Czech Republic, Trinidad, and Tobago, the majority of these countries in the last 3 to 4 years of her life. Although she worked very hard, Dr. Strauss had a grateful appreciation of life's pleasures, and she lived her life fully.

Dr. Strauss leaves behind her loving husband, Dr. Josef Cherniawsky, and children Ze'ev, Avital, and Tamar. She also leaves behind many dear friends and colleagues, all of whom were exceedingly fortunate to have had her in their lives and are now mourning the loss of a friend, colleague, and mentor. Her spirit lives on in her work, and in the life she lived — that of being a true example of a clinical neuropsychologist who managed to be simultaneously a mentor, mother, wife, scholar, colleague, clinician, and researcher, while always maintaining a love of science, a spirit of inquiry, and a genuine human warmth. She will be greatly missed.