David Rollo Hawkins Sr.

David Rollo Hawkins Sr. M.D., 84, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, died on Sunday, June 8, 2008 at the Dubose Health Center in Chapel Hill. Dr. Hawkins had a long and distinguished career as a researcher, educator, administrator, and clinician at the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, and the University of Chicago.
Dr. Hawkins was born September 22, 1923 in Springfield, MA, the son of James Alexander Hawkins, Ph.D. and Janet Annand Rollo Hawkins. He received a B.A. degree at Amherst College in 1944, and an M.D. degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1946. He met Elizabeth Greenfield Wilson in 1946 and they were married in Batavia, NY on June 8, 1946. Dr. Hawkins was in the United States Army throughout college and medical school. After an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and army training in San Antonio, TX, Dr. Hawkins and his young family were stationed in Regensburg, Germany for a two year tour, where he served as chief medical officer at the U.S. Army Hospital there. He returned to the University of Rochester where he trained in Psychiatry with John Romano and George Engels.
The Hawkins' came to Chapel Hill in 1952, the alma mater of David's wife Elizabeth, and he became one of the first faculty in the new Department of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine. His arrival coincided with the expansion of the Medical School to a four year program and the opening of the new North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was on the UNC Medical School faculty for fifteen years, where he conducted ground breaking research on sleep and dreaming, and psychosomatic medicine. In 1963-64, he took a year's sabbatical as a fellow of the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London, England. During that time, he, his wife, and their four young boys toured extensively throughout Europe in a Volkswagon microbus.
In 1967, Dr. Hawkins became the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, VA. There he presided over the integration of psychodynamic and biological psychiatry in the department.
In 1979, he joined the psychiatric medical faculty at the Michael Reese Hospital at the University of Chicago, where he taught, treated patients, conducted research, and served as Chief of Psychiatry for thirteen years until his retirement in 1993. That year, Dr. and Mrs. Hawkins decided to return to Chapel Hill - the place that they had always considered "home." In his retirement years, he contributed passages to a history of the UNC School of Medicine.
Throughout his career, Dr. Hawkins bridged two academic worlds, that of psychoanalysis and that of biological psychiatry. He became a psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, and eventually served as President of the American College of Psychoanalysts. He published extensively, most notably for classic research on sleep and dreaming in depression, on psychophysiology of the autonomic nervous system, and on medical education. Having attained the distinction of full Professor of Psychiatry by age forty, Dr. Hawkins was widely known among psychiatrists throughout the world as an energetic, eclectic, and kind leader, fostering the careers of many current leaders in the field.
Though a northerner by birth, David Hawkins came to think of himself as a Chapel Hillian and North Carolinian, enjoying summers near Mount Mitchell in the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the coast at Edisto Island, SC. He and Elizabeth traveled throughout the world, including attendance at conferences in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and in China.
Dr. Hawkins is survived by Elizabeth, his wife of 62 years; sons David Jr. of Hampden, ME, Rob of Arlington, VA, John of Chapel Hill, and Alex of Madison, WI; ten grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A gathering of family and friends to celebrate his life will be held at the Cedars of Chapel Hill, Cedar Club Circle, on Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 2:00 p.m.