Leon J. Kamin (1927-2017) IN MEMORIAM

Presents an obituary of Leon J. Kamin (1927-2017), former chair of the Psychology Department at Northeastern University. Over the course of his career, Kamin demonstrated a rare combination of skills as a researcher, scholar, and administrator. Early in his career, Kamin developed an influential line of research on conditioning. In fact, a conditioning effect, the Kamin (blocking) effect, is named after him. Later in his career, he became interested in the heritability of intelligence, leading to his debunking of Cyril Burt's famous twin studies and the publication of his extremely influential book The Science and Politics of IQ (1974). Kamin also enjoyed great success as an administrator, serving as chair in each of the departments in which he worked. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).