Presents Michael J. Meaney as one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (2012). Michael J. Meaney has taken the phenomenon of "handling" of newborn rats and opened a new area of investigation that has given new meaning to epigenetics via his work demonstrating transgenerational behavioral transmission to offspring of exploratory, nurturing, and anxiety-related behaviors. He has also used this model to demonstrate reversible, early-life epigenetic modifications of genes in the infant brain by DNA methylation that affect gene expression and that lead to behavioral characteristics in response to stressors that can last throughout the life span. His studies have also shown a pathway for translation of these processes to the human condition and, in so doing, have inspired a new generation of basic and translational research on gene-environment interactions in early life that affect the brain and behavior. A citation, biography, and selected bibliography are presented here.