John Clinton Loehlin (January 13, 1926 – August 9, 2020) was an American behaviorial geneticist, computer scientist, and psychologist. Loehlin served as president of the

Behavior Genetics Association The Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) is a learned society established in 1970 that promotes research into the connections between heredity and behavior, both human and animal. Its members support education and training in behavior genetics and ...

and of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. He was an ISIR lifetime achievement awardee.

Life and career

He received a Bachelor of Arts in English from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1947, and a Ph.D. in psychology from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, in 1957. He was on active service in the

United States Naval Reserve The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2004, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called reservists, are categorized as being in either the S ...

in 1951-53 during the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

. He taught at the

University of Nebraska A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

from 1957 to 1964, then took a position at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, where he remained the rest of his life. Even after retirement, he remained active in research and publishing. His book on Latent variable models (now in its fourth edition) remains very popular. He was a keen poet. His son is the American author and scholar James Loehlin. Loehlin's research chiefly focused on the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in normal human personality traits and abilities; he was also concerned with racial differences and with computer modeling. He was involved in several twin family, and adoption studies, notably the Texas Adoption Project with Joseph M. Horn and Lee Willerman. He wrote on the

race and intelligence controversy The history of the race and intelligence controversy concerns the historical development of a debate about possible explanations of group differences encountered in the study of race and intelligence. Since the beginning of IQ testing around the ...

. He was a Director of the

American Eugenics Society The American Eugenics Society (AES) was a pro-eugenics organization dedicated to "furthering the discussion, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge about biological and sociocultural forces which affect the structure and composition of huma ...

from 1968 to 1974. In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "

Mainstream Science on Intelligence "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers led by psychologist Linda Gottfredson. It was published originally in ''The Wall Street Journal'' on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticism of the ...

",Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994).

. ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'', p A18. a public statement written by

Linda Gottfredson Linda Susanne Gottfredson (née Howarth; born 1947) is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emerita of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware- Johns Hopkins Project for the Study o ...

, published in response to popular criticism of the conclusions presented in Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial book ''

The Bell Curve ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by the psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and the political scientist Charles Murray in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influe ...

'' (1994). One of his PhD students was

Eric Turkheimer Eric Nathan Turkheimer is an American psychologist and the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Early life and education Turkheimer is the son of Nathan Turkheimer, the former board chairman of the public rel ...

. In 1995, he took part in the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

task force writing a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research in response to the claims being advanced amid the ''

Bell Curve In probability theory and statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is f(x) = \frac e^\ ...

'' controversy, titled " Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns."

Selected publications

*Loehlin, J. C. (1968). Computer models of personality. New York: Random House. *Loehlin, J. C., Lindzey, G., & Spuhler, J. N. (1975). Race differences in intelligence. San Francisco: Freeman. *Loehlin, J. C., & Nichols, R. C. (1976). Heredity, environment, and personality: A study of 850 sets of twins. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. *Loehlin, J. C. (1987). Latent variable models: An introduction to factor, path, and structural analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. * Loehlin, J. C. (1992). Genes and environment in personality development. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. * Loehlin, J.C. (2004). ''Latent Variable Models: An Introduction to Factor, Path, and Structural Equation Analysis''. Psychology Press.

References

External links

John C. Loehlin site
via University of Texas at Austin {{DEFAULTSORT:Loehlin, John C. 1926 births 2020 deaths American computer scientists 20th-century American psychologists Behavior geneticists Harvard University alumni American Eugenics Society members American intelligence researchers People involved in race and intelligence controversies University of California, Berkeley alumni United States Navy personnel of the Korean War United States Navy reservists 21st-century American psychologists