Ovide F. Pomerleau

Pomerleau was born and grew up in Waterville, Maine, the son of Ovid Pomerleau, a physician and general surgeon, and Florence Beaudet Pomerleau. He earned a B.A. (1962) in philosophy from Bowdoin College, followed by a M.S. (1965) in general psychology and Ph.D. (1969) in experimental psychology from Columbia University, where he trained in the laboratory of William N. Schoenfeld. In 1971 he completed postdoctoral training in clinical psychology at Temple University, where he worked with Philip H. Bobrove and Louis C. Harris.

Pomerleau held a faculty appointment in the Temple University Department of Psychiatry from 1969 to 1972. During this time, he and his colleagues designed and tested a token economy at Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry that extended earlier work on token economies in psychiatric settings by addressing the behavior not only of seriously mentally ill patients but also of paraprofessional staff.

From 1972 to 1979, Pomerleau served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychiatry, where he and John Paul Brady founded the Center for Behavioral Medicine in 1973 [1] to develop interventions for weight management and the treatment of smoking and problem drinking, chronic behaviors associated with diminished quality of life, decreased longevity, and pathophysiology. The Center for Behavioral Medicine focused on the application of behavior modification to medical care,[2] an approach subsequently expanded to encompass the integration of biological, behavioral, psychological, and social sciences for understanding illness and health.[3]

In 1979, Pomerleau joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut Department of Psychiatry, where he collaborated with L. Everett Seyler to demonstrate and quantitate, at the human level, the release of beta-endorphin and other hypophyseal hormones in response to nicotine administration.[4] Because of the role of endogenous opioids in promoting feelings of well-being and euphoria, these findings came under attack by the tobacco industry, which at the time maintained that tobacco was not addictive.[5]

From 1985 until his retirement in 2009, Pomerleau served on the faculty of the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry and ran the University of Michigan Nicotine Research Laboratory, which conducted research on the subjective, physiological, and biochemical effects of smoking, and on the effects of pharmacological probes and laboratory stressors on measures of nicotine intake and withdrawal. He developed a "sensitivity model" of nicotine addiction based on animal and human research,[6] subsequently supported by observations that pleasurable or euphoric responses to nicotine during early smoking experimentation predict later addiction.[7] He also conducted research on the relationship of smoking and psychiatric disorders, and his team was the first to document and describe the link between smoking and Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.[8] He was an early proponent of the need for measured genetic research on smoking and nicotine addiction.[9]

In 1965, Pomerleau married Cynthia Stodola Pomerleau, subsequently his collaborator at the University of Michigan. The couple has two daughters.