A native of Toronto, Canada, Dr. Harvey Moldofsky was formerly Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine and now is Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Medicine and Member Emeritus, Institute of Medical Science, School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. From 1993-2000 he served as the founding Director of the University of Toronto Center for Sleep and Chronobiology. Currently he is the President and Medical Director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic of the Center for Sleep and Chronobiology and President of the Toronto Psychiatric Research Foundation. He is an honorary member of the University Health Network Department of Psychiatry, and is a consultant to several Toronto hospitals and to the pharmaceutical industry.
Harvey Moldofsky earned his M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1959, was engaged in postgraduate training in Vancouver, Toronto, London and San Francisco. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Throughout much of his career together with his colleagues and students, he has been studying sleep physiology and biological rhythms. Recent interests have included sleep/wake-related immune, cytokine and neuroendocrine functions in various conditions including long-term space flight. Early research studies were devoted to eating disorders, Tourette's Syndrome, and rheumatic disease.
For more than 30 years he has studied the cause and treatment of illnesses characterized by chronic musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and nonrestorative sleep, which became known as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. His research on these topics, various aspects of primary sleep disorders [e.g., narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea, sleep violence, advance sleep phase syndrome], sleep - related medical and psychiatric disorders and their treatments are documented in more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications, approximately 60 book chapters and monographs, and in 180 abstracts that have been presented at international scientific meetings.
He has received many local, national and international awards and honors, including the regional award of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for his long-standing contributions as a medical educator. In honour of his contributions, in 1989 his friends and associates established The Dr. Harvey Moldofsky Scholarship for Psychiatric/Neuroscience Research, which is awarded annually to a medical student of the University of Toronto.
