Samuel Barondes has an AB and an MD from Columbia University, and was trained in clinical medicine and psychiatry at several Harvard teaching hospitals (Peter Bent Brigham, McLean, and Massachusetts General). He learned to do research in molecular biology at the National Institutes of Health. Thereafter, Barondes devoted himself to applying the new biological sciences to psychiatry. He has been a professor at the University of California since 1970, first at its San Diego campus and, since 1986, at its San Francisco campus, where he was, for seven years, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Director of Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute.

Dr. Barondes is author of more than 200 original research articles. He is a member or fellow of many professional societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He has also held national leadership positions, including chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Mental Health and president of the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. In 2000 he was the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Lecturer in Los Alamos.

In addition to his research publications, Dr. Barondes has written several books for a general audience: Molecules and Mental Illness (1993); Mood Genes: Hunting for Origins of Mania and Depression (1998); Better Than Prozac: Creating the Next Generation of Psychiatric Drugs (2003); and Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality (2011).