Lynne Lamberg

Lynne Lamberg (born 1942) is an American freelance science journalist, writer and editor. In addition to books on sleep, dreams, and biological rhythms, she has written hundreds of articles on mental and physical health for medical professionals and the general public.

Early life and education Lynne (Friedman) Lamberg, the daughter of Ralph M. and Fay G. (Bialick) Friedman, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1942. After a year at the University of Michigan, she earned an A.B. degree in 1963 at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a writer and editor for the campus newspaper, Student Life, and editor-in-chief of The Hatchet yearbook. She earned an M.A. in 1967 at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She married Stanford I. Lamberg in 1962.

Career In 1962, Lamberg began her career as assistant director of public relations at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis (now Barnes-Jewish Hospital). In 1964 she became director of public relations at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

In the 1970s, Lamberg began to work as a freelance medical writer, focusing on the then-emerging science of sleep. During a nighttime observation at the University of Chicago sleep laboratory, she had an unexpected encounter with two alligators housed in a bathroom, subjects themselves of a sleep study. The experience heightened her interest in reporting on diverse aspects of the then-young science of sleep.

By 1986, she had already written more than 60 articles on sleep and dreams for general circulation magazines, according to The Baltimore Sun. The Sleep Foundation said, "She is a regular contributor to JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association), and Psychiatric News, and reviews consumer books on sleep, biological rhythms and dreams."

Critical responses In the foreword to Bodyrhythms: Chronobiology and Peak Performance (William Morrow and Company, 1984), William C. Dement said, "...this is the most comprehensive text on sleep and wakefulness that has ever been written for the lay reader, and Lynne Lamberg, its author, is as much of a scientific expert as any nonscientist could be." A review in The Baltimore Sun quoted Lamberg's example explaining chronotherapy: "A drug like aspirin stays in the body for a very long time; it may not make any difference what time it's taken. Other drugs disappear within three or four hours, so the timing may be important." Elizabeth DeVita wrote in American Health that the book "...explores changing sleep patterns throughout the life cycle", concluding, "Eventually, says Lamberg, we may see a shift in school schedules, with high school students starting later and ending later in the day, and younger children starting earlier."

Montague Ullman, reviewing Crisis Dreaming, wrote that Lamberg, "...judging from her preface, has a natural affinity for dreams. The result is an excellent introduction to dreams and how to understand them. Written in a graceful, flowing style and set in a personal tone, there results a sense of intimacy between author and reader. This book is authoritative, informative, respectful of the dreamer and the dream, and it offers a structure within which dream work can be pursued."

John Langone, reviewing The Body Clock Guide in The New York Times in 2002, wrote, "Most of us can tell time, but few of us know how to tell body time, according to the authors of this book on (take your pick) chronobiology, chronomedicine, chronotherapy and chronorecord-keeping. 'We pay more attention to watches we wear on our wrists than to clocks we acquire in the womb,' they say. That diverted attention, they add, apparently prevents people from using the body's time machine, its natural rhythms, to fight illness and achieve maximum health. Sound too good to be true? Perhaps. But the science of body time is valid… All in all, it makes for informative reading, and it may well do some good."

Selected publications Books

Selected articles Baltimore, Maryland – via newspapers.com, pages 211, 216, 217, 219, 221.

Awards, honors While she was still in college, her factual feature article, "It's All in a Day's Work", won first prize in the local 1962 National Society of Arts and Letters contest.

In 1986, she was awarded Class AAA first place of the American Academy of Family Physicians in Kansas City, Mo., for "Arthritis: An Encouraging Progress Report", published in Better Homes and Gardens.

She received the 1999 National Alliance on Mental Illness Outstanding Media Award, for "What Are You Going to Do With a 41-Year-Old Man?"

In 2001, she won the Outstanding Book Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, for The Body Clock Guide to Better Health: How to Use Your Body's Natural Clock to Fight Illness and Achieve Maximum Health, co-authored with Michael Smolensky. The citation said, "Lamberg chronicles the difficult choices mothers and their physicians face regarding the complex risks and benefits of taking psychotropic medications and the impact of that decision on mother and child from conception through breastfeeding."

In 2016, the National Association of Science Writers gave Lamberg its Diane McGurgan Service Award, for volunteer service as NASW's Book Editor for more than 16 years, producing resources that highlight members' work and provide support for authors.

Lamberg was the recipient of the Sleep Health Advocate Award of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in June 2024.