Thomas P. Detre

Detre was born Tamas Feldmeier on May 17, 1924, in Budapest, Hungary. He decided to become a psychiatrist when he was 14. When he was 20, he found out that his parents and 20 other family members were murdered at Auschwitz. The very next year, he took the name “Detre,” from the French verb meaning “to be,” to signify his resolve to continue living. Detre left behind a tenured position at Yale University in 1973 to come to the University of Pittsburgh, becoming director of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine.