Robert J. Waldinger

Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen priest. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever done. The Study tracked the lives of 724 men for over 80 years and now studies their Baby Boomer children to understand how childhood experience reaches across decades to affect health and wellbeing in middle age. He writes about what science can teach us about healthy human development, and his book about the science of relationships, entitled “The Good Life,” was published by Simon & Schuster in January of 2023.

He is Founding Director of the Lifespan Research Foundation, dedicated to bringing the insights of lifespan research to the general public.

Dr. Waldinger is the author of numerous scientific papers, and he directs a teaching program in psychotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He has won awards for teaching and research from the American Psychiatric Association, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, and he is consistently named as one of the Best Doctors in America. He is also a transmitted teacher (roshi) in Living Vow Zen and teaches meditation throughout New England.

His TED talk on lessons from the longest study of happiness has had over 40 million views and is the fastest spreading talk in the history of TEDx events.