Otto klineberg biography

He held professorships in social psychology at Columbia University and the University of Paris. His pioneering work in the s on the intelligence of white and black students in the United States and his evidence as an expert witness in Delaware were instrumental in winning the Supreme Court school segregation case Brown v.

Born in Quebec City, Klineberg was raised in Montreal.

Board of Education in Born in Quebec City, Klineberg was raised in Montreal. He obtained a bachelor's degree from McGill University in , a master's degree in philosophy from Harvard University in , a medical degree from McGill in and a Ph. He remained at Columbia as chairman of the newly created department of social psychology. There, he was influenced by Franz Boas , a German anthropologist who created the cultural anthropology doctoral program at Columbia.

In , he began research about the psychological differences between African Americans and Native Americans, which, though controversial at the time, helped to correct prior beliefs of race-based inferiority. He married Selma Gintzler in , with whom he had a daughter and two sons.

Psychologist Otto Klineberg in the s that Blacks in four northern states did better on average than whites in the four southern states.

Klineberg was a polyglot and spoke English, German, Chinese in addition to the major Romance Languages. He helped found the International Social Science Council and the International Union of Psychological Science, on which he served on the executive committee — , as secretary-general — and as president — From to he was professor at the University of Paris , where he directed the International Center for Intergroup Relations until On his retirement to Manhattan in , he taught part-time at the City University of New York until He died following a brief period of Parkinson's disease.

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