David Rioch

David McKenzie Rioch (July 6, 1900 – September 11, 1985) was a psychiatric research scientist and neuroanatomist, known as a pioneer in brain research and for leading the interdisciplinary neuropsychiatry division at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (1951–1970), a program that contributed to the formation of the then-nascent field of neuroscience.

W. Maxwell Cowan, Donald H. Harter, and Eric R. Kandel cited "the seminal roles played by David McKenzie Rioch, Francis O. Schmitt, and... Stephen W. Kuffler in creating neuroscience as we now know it." He received a bachelor's degree from Butler College in 1920,

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research From 1951 until his retirement in 1970, Rioch served as the founding director of the Division of Neuropsychiatry at the Water Reed Army Institute of Research. During his tenure, Rioch particularly studied the relationship between stress and major depressive disorder, and he emphasized the use of basic anatomical and physiological methods in informing psychiatric research on human behavior. After retiring in 1970, Rioch continued to give guest lectures at Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and served as a senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. David Hubel has written that "In the neuropsychiatry division, David Rioch had assembled a broad and lively group of young neuroscientists... the focus was on the entire nervous system, not on a subdivision of biological subject matter based on methods."

Personal life Rioch married clinical psychologist Margaret Jeffrey Rioch in 1938. In the 1960s, they lived in the suburb of Somerset, Maryland, sometimes referred to jokingly as the "Freudian Village" or "Little Vienna" due to the high number of psychiatrists in the neighborhood. Rioch died at home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on September 11, 1985, following heart problems.