Bruce Smoller

Bruce M. Smoller was born in Chicago, Illinois, but moved to New York City at the age of three and grew up in the borough of Queens, the oldest of three children.

He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1965, where he met his wife, Cosette. He received his medical degree from Tulane University in 1969. Cosette received her MD degree from New York University after attending Tulane for her first two years. Both then trained at New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center; Cosette in Radiology and Bruce in Psychiatry, after a brief foray into orthopedic surgery.  

After finishing his psychiatry residency at Payne Whitney Clinic of the New York Hospital, he and Cosette and their young daughter Jamie moved to Maryland, whereupon he began his practice in psychiatry in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He served with the US Army Reserves in the capacity of a physician in a Hospital Unit from 1970 to 1978.

During his years of practice, Dr. Smoller also taught, and was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine, teaching for a total of 37 years. He also consulted for 20 years to the National Institutes of Health Pain Research Program, and was the psychiatric consultant to all of the in-house clinical pain research at NIH from 1981 through 2002. 

He is the co-author of a book on pain for the general public published by Doubleday and a co-author on a number of papers on pain physiology.

After closing his clinical practice, Dr. Smoller began a consultancy to the federal government on intelligence issues.

He served on the board and as an officer of the Montgomery County Medical Society and was its president. He continues to serve on its board.

Dr. Smoller began service on the MedChi Board of Trustees and served as President of MedChi in 2007-8. He has served as Trustee from Montgomery County, Operations Council Chair, Communications Council Chair, and AMA Chair and in various offices.  He continues to serve on the board.

He also served as an interim chair of the Center  and as part of his interdisciplinary outreach, served for five years on a Maryland State Bar Committee under the Chief Judge of Maryland to adjudicate disability requests for bar candidates.

He served as the editor of Maryland Medicine and chair of the editorial board for 20 years.

He continues to serve as an AMA delegate and was AMA delegation chair from 2017 to 2020.  He was elected to and served on the AMA Council on Science and Public Health from 2015-2019.

He is engaged in a 52-year quest to master the Jazz Guitar, which his wife insists will never happen, has two wonderful daughters and lives with his very accomplished wife and even more accomplished two dogs in the Washington suburbs of Maryland.