Stephen Fleck (September 18, 1912 – December 19, 2002) was a professor in the psychiatry, epidemiology and public health departments at the Yale University School of Medicine from 1953 to 1983 and professor emeritus from 1983 until his death. He had an early effect on the direction that American psychiatry took during the mid- to late-twentieth century. With Theodore Lidz and Alice Cornelison, he was a co-author of the seminal book Schizophrenia and the Family (1965), a significant influence on the modern psychiatric thought and practice regarding the origins and treatments of schizophrenia. Early life One of four sons and one daughter born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Georg and Anna Fleck, he was a young medical student in 1933 when a professor warned him and several other Jewish students that there were Nazi warrants out for their arrests. Fleck and most of his immediate family fled Hitler's Germany, first to The Netherlands and then, in 1935, to Boston, Massachusetts, where he became a U.S. citizen. He finished medical school at Harvard, where he was a graduate assistant to John Rock while Rock was performing the preliminary research that led to the invention of the first birth control pill. This helped to spark Fleck's lifelong interest in contraception and family planning issues. Military service In 1941, Fleck enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and rose to the rank of captain. He was first stationed as a medical officer at Camp Aliceville, a U.S. Army Prisoner of War Camp at Aliceville, Alabama, where he was involved in treating a diphtheria epidemic that spread quickly among the prisoners. Among the Nazi prisoners were a number of Rommel Corps soldiers, some of whom, even while incarcerated in west central Alabama, attempted to assassinate other Nazis they saw as having been disloyal to the Third Reich. Since Fleck kept his national origin and fluency in German secret from the prisoners, he was able to prevent some of these plotted murders. He was subsequently shipped to the European Theater, and first posted in England in Army camp hospitals. Just before D-Day, Fleck was posted to Bournemouth, England, to await transport over the channel with the medical (ambulance) corps. While in Bournemouth, he met Louise Harlan, an American Red Cross volunteer. Fleck stayed with ambulance corps attached to the 72nd and 76th Divisions as they moved through Belgium. He was present at the Battle of the