Robert Ader (February 20, 1932 – December 20, 2011) was an American psychologist and academic who co-founded psychoneuroimmunology, a field of study which explores the links connecting the brain, behavior, and the immune system.
[2] Robert Ader spent his entire career at the University of Rochester, where he held many teaching and research positions.
[3] On beginning his career as a part-time instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, Robert Ader focused his research on behavioral conditioning and emotional responsiveness in rats.
The researchers gave the rats water sweetened with saccharin followed by an injection of cyclophosphamide, an immunosuppressant which caused nausea.
[1][5] Due to weakened immune systems, the rats contracted bacterial and viral infections that they were unable to fight off.
[5][1] This serendipitous discovery led Robert Ader to continue research in and develop the field of psychoneuroimmunology, a term that he created and first used in his 1980 presidential speech to the American Psychosomatic Society.