Edwin S. Shneidman

He went to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for undergraduate and graduate work, earning a master's degree in psychology in 1940.

[1] Afterward, Shneidman returned to graduate school, earning a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Southern California (USC).

He formulated many terms to use in such study: as his researcher colleague Norman Farberow wrote of him: "He is one of the brightest, sharpest, most intellectually gifted persons I have ever known," and later spoke of Shneidman's ability to coin new terms, such as suicidology,[3] psychological autopsy,[4] psychache,[5] and pseudocide notes[6] (notes collected from non-suicidal subjects and compared with writings in a 1957 study).

In 1966 Shneidman began working as chief of a national project at the NIH to establish suicide prevention centers, and increased their number from a few to 100 in 40 states in three years.

Shneidman married Jeanne, and they had four sons: David William, Jonathan Aaron, Paul Samuel, Robert James[1][7] He died at the age of 91 on May 15, 2009, in Los Angeles, California.