Mary Jeanne Kreek

Mary Jeanne Kreek (born 1937) is an American neurobiologist specializing in the study and treatment of addiction. She is best known for her work with Vincent Dole and Marie Nyswander in the development of methadone therapy for heroin addiction.

Her father, Louis Francis Kreek, was an Examiner-in-Chief and served on the Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. On January 24, 1970 she married Dr. Robert A. Schaefer.

Kreek graduated with a B.A. in chemistry from Wellesley College in 1958, and in 1962, she received her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1962.

Kreek completed a fellowship in gastroenterology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center after completing her M.D. She taught medicine at the Cornell Medical College.

As of November 2015, she is a Senior Attending Physician, the Patrick E. and Beatrice M. Haggerty Professor, and Head of the Laboratory of the Biology of Addictive Diseases at Rockefeller University.

In 2000, Kreek was named a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, and in 2004, she received an Alumni Gold Medal Award from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for “lifetime excellence in medicine”. In 2014, Kreek was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Institute on Drug Addiciton.