Herbert Kleber

Early life and education Kleber was born June 19, 1934, in Pittsburgh. Both of his parents were eastern-European Jewish immigrants. His father, Max Kleber, was a trained pharmacist who made his career in his family-owned luggage manufacturing business. His mother, Dorothea (Schulman) Kleber, was active in fund raising for Israel.

Kleber's work promoted scientific research into the causes and treatments of addiction. He rejected an earlier common moralistic approach to treatment. Kleber viewed substance use disorders as diseases rather than moral failings and stressed the importance of research in treatment. He was a leader in reframing addiction treatment as a medical discipline and advocated for the use of medications as well as therapeutic communities in maintaining recovery and reducing rates of relapse. He focused on developing program which was individualized, and not "one size fits all" approach as some addicts may be afflicted by psychological problems, or have no vocational skills.

In 1992, Kleber, with his wife Marian Fischman, co-founded the Substance Abuse Division, one of the leading centers in the country for treatment of such abuse, within the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He was director of the Division, and headed a number of projects on new methods to treat individuals with cocaine, heroin, prescription opioid, alcohol, or marijuana addictions. He also co-founded the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia with Joseph Califano.

A 2014 article in Vice said that Kleber served as a paid consultant to the opioid pharmaceutical industry.

Kleber was author or co-author of more than 250 papers, and the co-editor of the American Psychiatric Press Textbook of Substance Abuse Treatment, now in its fourth edition. He received numerous prestigious awards and two honorary degrees.

He was elected in 1996 as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.