Jerry Hirsch

Jerome Edwin Hirsch (September 20, 1922 – May 3, 2008) was an American psychologist known for his pioneering work in behavior genetics, and for his advocacy for social justice.^[1][2][3] He has been described as "the pioneer who brought quantitative genetic analysis to the study of behavior."^[4]

He was born on September 20, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City.^[3]

Hirsch began his interest in behavior genetics in the 1950s, as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Edward C. Tolman and Robert Tryon.^[5] From 1956 to 1960, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University, where he worked alongside Theodosius Dobzhansky.^[3] He later conducted multiple influential studies on the genetic origins of behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster, Dobzhansky's favorite species.^[5][6] He subsequently continued this research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,^[4] where he became an associate professor of psychology and zoology in 1960. He became a full professor of psychology there in 1963, of zoology in 1966, and of ecology, ethology, and evolution in 1976.^[7] On March 30, 1970, he hosted the founding meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[8] He was the editor-in-chief of Animal Behaviour from 1968 to 1972^[3] and of the Journal of Comparative Psychology from 1983 to 1988.^[9] He retired from the University of Illinois in 1993, and remained an active emeritus professor there until 2004.^[7]

He died on May 3, 2008, at his home in Urbana, Illinois.^[3]

Hirsch was an early and vocal critic of the work of Arthur Jensen, who argued that group differences in educational ability were heritable. Hirsch argued that Jensen's work was a misuse and misrepresentation of behavior genetics^[10] and that Jensen's "avowed goals" were "as heinously barbaric as were Hitler's and the anti-abolitionists".^[11] In the mid-1960s, William Shockley tried to convince Hirsch to support his views on the heritability of racial differences in IQ. This attempt was unsuccessful, and Hirsch subsequently called the nature-nurture debate a "pseudo-question".^[12]