John P. Blass is a physician, biochemist and neurochemist who was born on February 21, 1937 to Gustaf Blass and Jolan Wirth Blass in Vienna, Austria. Both his parents were physicians; his father was a prominent Viennese radiologist and his mother, a student of Sigmund Freud, was a psychoanalyst originally from Budapest. The family then moved to Stamford, Connecticut. Both parents practiced psychiatry, Gustaf in a private sanitarium in Stamford and Jolan as a child psychiatrist in New York City and Connecticut.