Image courtesy of Frances Cohen
Dr. Alan I. Green, a pioneer in the fields of neuropsychopharmacology and dual diagnosis, passed away on Thanksgiving Day, 2020, after a long battle with cancer. Dr. Green earned his MD at John Hopkin’s School of Medicine in 1969, where he also worked in the laboratory of Dr. Solomon Snyder. Dr. Green coauthored five peer-reviewed scientific publications during his medical training, focusing on neurotransmitter inactivation in the brain. After a 7-year battle with cytomegalic virus, which kept him bed-bound, Dr. Green returned to finish his residency in Psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC). While at MMHC, Dr. Green worked with mentors, Dr. Joseph Schildkraut and Dr. Carl Salzman, to investigate the unique properties of clozapine to manage substance use in schizophrenia, a line of research that would make him internationally renowned for his expertise in neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Green then became Chairman and Raymond Sobel Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, maintaining both his research and clinical work in psychiatry for the next 18 years until his death.
While many editorials have been, and will be, written on Dr. Green’s life and work in the wake of his passing, we wanted to take the opportunity to honor his extraordinary mentorship abilities. During his career, Dr. Green mentored countless M.D. and Ph.D. students, post-doctoral students, and undergraduate students, and became known as a thoughtful, warm, and encouraging mentor. Below, several of his previous trainees share their memories of Dr. Green, and the impact he had on their lives and careers.
The last time I spoke to Dr. Green, he talked to me about having time to reflect and that the most rewarding part of his career had been mentoring junior scientists and students. As someone who benefitted from that mentorship, I can say that those are not just words. He put his all into mentoring us. Didn’t matter if he was on a train ride across Europe with his family, or struggling to sit up because of the back pain he was in, he made sure that he was helping us reach our desired goals in every way that he could. I can still remember a few years ago when I was working on a career development award feeling especially stressed out about the state that it was in, and I walked into Dr. Green’s office almost in tears. I remember that night, Dr. Green stayed with me in his office past mid-night until I felt better. Even in his last days, he asked me multiple times what he could do for me now, and after he was gone!
I’ve been trying to think of an analogy for Dr. Green’s devotion to his mentees, and the best example comes from something I saw Dr. Green do year after year at the annual Psychiatry summer picnics. After everyone had eaten, Dr. Green would gather the kids and would give them rides on the boat in the small pond, rowing and singing at the same time. It was an absolute delight for the kids, and I could see that Dr. Green took great delight in it as well. In thinking back, us as the mentees are very much like those kids in the boat and Dr. Green the oarsman that helped us all get to where we needed to go, all the while singing us a song, without us ever knowing the pain or difficulty that he was in.
In the last few months as the condolences have come in, one of them by another Dartmouth Neuroscientist, Matthijs van der Meer, PhD, captured it beautifully: “I didn’t know him well, but marveled at how one and the same person could be both a leader on big, important projects, and yet seemed to make every individual person feel like you had his complete attention and he’d already been thinking about what he could do for you.” I hope that all of us can honor Dr. Green’s legacy and pay it forward by doing the same for the people that we mentor, no matter the size of our boat, or the length of our journey with them.
- Jibran Khokhar, Ph.D.
The first time I met Dr. Green, I was a first year graduate student hoping to do a rotation in his lab. I had scheduled a 30 minute meeting with him through his secretary, and had no idea what to expect. Nervously sitting outside his office waiting for his secretary to call me in felt like a graduate school admissions interview all over again. I think the first thing he said to me was “tell me why you’re here”—a daunting question for a young student just trying to make a good impression. I’m sure I rambled on about what I studied during my undergraduate career and what I hoped to do in graduate school. I don’t recall the specifics of our conversation now, but what I do remember is how I felt leaving that meeting. I felt inspired. Inspired to do science and inspired to learn. Dr. Green’s love of science was infectious. Each and every time we met over the years, I left his office feeling excited about research. When someone presented their data during lab meetings, he would ask everyone their thoughts on the results and their ideas for subsequent studies. Many times we would outline future grants or papers together as a group, with Dr. Green’s passion for science at the heart of every meeting. He was driven and ambitious while also supportive and empathetic. He instilled a hard work ethic, provided scientific guidance, and career advice (which often came in the form of his own life stories). A meeting with Dr. Green would fly by and I would leave feeling eager to continue my studies. I think that his genuine enthusiasm for science was part of what made Dr. Green a wonderful mentor and I hope that one day I can inspire trainees the way that he inspired me.
- Emily Sullivan, Ph.D. candidate
It is difficult to know how to write a memorial for a person who had such a lasting impact on your life. Words feel incapable of capturing the spirit of Dr. Alan Green, who was an incredibly imposing figure, while also being deeply empathetic and kind. I first met Dr. Green when I interviewed for a post-doctoral position in his lab. To be completely honest, I had expected to not take the job; I had another offer at an institution I thought was my first choice. But spending five minutes with Dr. Green convinced me otherwise, and I moved my family across the country to start the position in his lab. It turned out to be one of the best career, and personal, decisions I ever made. Dr. Green had a special way of allowing his trainees to develop their own research ideas, while also guiding them to be realistic and strategic about the type of projects to initiate. Dr. Green was also an amazing writer, evidenced by his ability to repeatedly obtain high-level funding, and he would sit with his mentees with a pen and paper scrutinizing their writing (for the better). He would often say, “You have to get inside the thing,” meaning you have to immerse yourself in the grant or manuscript in order to be able to meaningfully translate the message to others. We would often laugh at these phrases (he had many), but I am sure I will tell my own trainees they need to “get inside” their writing.
While Dr. Green would rarely compliment you outright to your face, he would speak about you to others as if you were the most brilliant scientist alive. He wrote me countless letters of recommendation, each one singing my praises in the most eloquent, sincere way. At the end of his life, he still held weekly lab meetings with us via zoom. Though I had moved on at that point to a tenure-track faculty position, I would often still attend lab meetings just to get some words of advice and encouragement from Dr. Green. In one of the last meetings, a couple weeks before his death, Dr. Green asked each of us what he needed to do, what he needed to leave behind, so that we could be successful. He wrote letters of recommendation for each person to use after he was gone. I was, and still am, amazed by this selflessness; in his final days Dr. Green cared deeply about his students. He was a wonderful mentor, a wonderful friend, and I will dearly miss him.
The Greek philosopher Plutarch said, “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting,” and Dr. Green had the uncanny ability to ignite a passion for science and research in his mentees. I only hope I can make Dr. Green proud by doing the same for my students.
- Angela Henricks, Ph.D.