Abraham Wikler (October 12, 1910 – March 7, 1981)[1] was an American psychiatrist and neurologist who made important discoveries in drug addiction.
[3] His research on conditioning and relapse played a pioneering role in the neuroscientific study of addiction.
[4] Wikler was born and grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of a Jewish butcher who had immigrated from the Probuzhna shtetl in Ukraine.
[2] He then returned to Lexington as associate director and chief of the section on experimental neuropsychiatry,[6] one of three permanent staff researchers at the facility.
[5] Wikler retired from the USPHS in 1963 and joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky[2][9] In 1967, the alumni association of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center (to which the Long Island College of Medicine had been renamed) gave him their Alumni Achievement Medallion for Distinguished Service to American Medicine.