Salman Akhtar is a psychoanalyst practicing in the United States. He is an author and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He was born into a Muslim family in Khairabad, Uttar Pradesh to Jan Nisar Akhtar, a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet, and singer Safia Akhtar, a teacher and writer. After receiving his M.D. at Aligarh Muslim University's Medical School in India, he did his internship at Maulana Azad Medical College of the University of Delhi in India. He moved to the U.S.A. in 1973 and did his residency and psychiatric training at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College and psychiatrist a at the Jefferson University Hospital as well as a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His more than 300 publications include 13 books. 

July 31st, 1946 in Lucknow (Age 78)