Fred Bookstein, to whom the University of Michigan awarded an interdepartmental Ph.D. (statistics and zoology) in 1977, remained there for more than a quarter of a century, pursuing statistical and biological research, singing in choruses, and operating a bed-and-breakfast with his wife. In 2005, he finally retired from Michigan in order to relocate to Seattle. At the University of Washington, he is Scientific Director of the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit (FADU), Professor of Statistics, and Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Also, as an unintended consequence of global warming (specifically, the Iceman, OEtzi, thawing out from his Alpine glacier), he is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Bookstein teaches graduate students about tools for measuring the shape of body parts like brains or hearts, and also he lectures extensively about current trends in scientific research and its relationship to the larger public good. Nowadays his research concentrates on fetal alcohol science and on morphometrics, which is the information borne in biological shape for a wide range of biomedical applications, such as evolution or craniofacial surgery. His list of scientific publications is more than three hundred items long. About fifty of these were written jointly with other staff at FADU, with whom he has worked for more than twenty years.

At the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, Prof. Bookstein heads the research thrust about brain form and its correlations with behavioral deficits and psychiatric problems in people diagnosed with a fetal-alcohol-related disorder. Both in this country and in Europe he is exploring new ways of detecting this brain damage right at birth, so the alcohol-affected child can be diagnosed properly and can begin receiving appropriate medical and social services at the earliest possible age. Bookstein also works with the Legal Issues subgroup at FADU, consulting with attorneys in selected cases to bring information about fetal alcohol brain damage to the attention of courts in the course of sentencing decisions.

He can be reached at flb@stat.washington.edu or by telephone at the FADU phone number given on our home page.