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. He has been described as "the pioneer who brought quantitative genetic analysis to the study of behavior." From 1956 to 1960, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University, where he worked alongside Theodosius Dobzhansky. He subsequently continued this research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 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. He was the editor-in-chief of Animal Behaviour from 1968 to 1972 He retired from the University of Illinois in 1993, and remained an active emeritus professor there until 2004.

He died on May 3, 2008, at his home in Urbana, Illinois. and that Jensen's "avowed goals" were "as heinously barbaric as were Hitler's and the anti-abolitionists". 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".