More than 40 years ago, a scholar and researcher in the psychology of happiness named Philip Brickman helped publish one of the first scientific studies on happiness—a paper titled, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” The New York Times called it “the peanut butter and jelly sandwich of happiness studies.”

Not long after publishing that study, Brickman went to the University of Michigan, where he’d become the director of the Institute for Social Research. It was a prestige gig, an honor often reserved for academics at the pinnacle of their careers. He seemed destined for much greater things—scholarship, research, writing, and even changing the world. One of his closest friends said, “He wanted the world to be a more humane place.”

But on May 13, 1982, at the age of 38, Philip Brickman made his way onto the roof of Tower Plaza and jumped. It was a 26-story fall. According to those who knew him, Brickman was not a man who struggled with ongoing, intractable suicidal impulses. Depression and feelings of deep inadequacy, yes. But suicide? Not that they knew of, not until the final weeks of his life. One of his former graduate students said, “To imagine what could have driven him to do that — I almost had to imagine a different person. So, it made me wonder: Was there an underlying disorder that we just didn’t see?”

A close friend said that he envied Brickman’s family life. And on the surface, there was certainly a lot to envy: Three adorable girls, a lovely wife, an idyllic farm outside Ann Arbor. But that portrait of domestic serenity was hard won. Brickman didn’t exactly come from a family where commitment came naturally. His father was forever destabilizing the household with his extramarital affairs, and Brickman was an anxious, insecure little boy. His marriage was also fraught with unhappiness and insecurity.

His scholarship on the subject of happiness wasn’t enough. As The New York Times article said, “Philip Brickman was an expert in the psychology of happiness, but he couldn’t make his own pain go away.”