Monday, June 15, 2026
Lewis Terman -- Stanford Psychologist -- Posted June 15, 2026
Lewis Terman.
Father and son.
Lewis Terman. The father.
Frederick Terman. The son. President of Stanford.
The lede:
To the Los Angeles juvenile authorities in 1923, Edward Dmytryk was an ordinary runaway trying to escape a vicious father who tore up his schoolbooks and clubbed him with a two-by-four. Mr. Dmytryk wanted his 14-year-old son back—if only, as the caseworker suspected, because Edward brought home vital income.
While the authorities deliberated, a letter arrived from Professor Lewis Terman, the nation's most famous psychologist and the man who had planted the term "IQ" in America's vocabulary. He wasn't a relative or family friend; he had never even met the boy. But the Stanford professor believed Edward deserved a break because he was "gifted"—a word Terman coined to describe the bright kids he devoted his life to researching.
Edward's high score on an IQ test had qualified him for Terman's pathbreaking Genetic Study of Genius. Terman, who had grown up gifted himself, was gathering evidence to squelch the popular stereotype of brainy, "bookish" children as frail oddballs doomed to social isolation. He wanted to show that most smart kids were robust and well-adjusted—that they were, in fact, born leaders who ought to be identified early and cultivated for their rightful roles in society.
Though the more than 1,000 youngsters enrolled in his study didn't know it at the time, they were embarking on a lasting relationship. As Terman poked around in their lives with his inquisitive surveys, "he fell in love with those kids," explains Albert Hastorf, emeritus professor of psychology. To the group he always called "my gifted children"—even after they grew up—Terman became mentor, confidant, guidance counselor and sometimes guardian angel, intervening on their behalf. In doing so, he crashed through the glass that is supposed to separate scientists from subjects, undermining his own data. But Terman saw no conflict in nudging his protégés toward success, and many of them later reflected that being a "Terman kid" had indeed shaped their self-images and changed the course of their lives.
Thanks to Terman's timely letter, for example, Edward Dmytryk went to a good foster home. You may have seen his name in the titles for The Caine Mutiny, one of the 23 films he later directed.
Forty-four years after Terman's death, the study is still going on. About 200 of his "kids" are alive, still completing periodic questionnaires on their health and activities and returning them to Stanford's psychology department. The Termites, as they're fondly nicknamed, have been tracked for nearly 80 years now, through nearly all the milestones of life. It's the longest-running survey ever carried out. And although Terman didn't conceive it as such, the study established a powerful new research approach: the longitudinal investigation, in which scientists follow a group of people over many years to learn how factors in early life influence later variables such as health and longevity.
Marred by design flaws, the genius study yielded few momentous conclusions beyond reassuring Americans that it's okay to be smart. Yet the archives have a value that Terman never envisioned: they provide an unmatched record of lives that spanned almost all of the 20th century. Researchers have pored over the Terman files to explore historical phenomena (did World War II veterans suffer lingering effects of combat?) as well as broader questions (does personality influence life span?). Social scientists have called the archives a national treasure because they tell the life stories of so many Americans.
A story of a different kind emerges from Terman's own writings—a disturbing tale of the beliefs of a pioneer in psychology. Lewis Terman was a loving mentor, yes, but his ardent promotion of the gifted few was grounded in a cold-blooded, elitist ideology. Especially in the early years of his career, he was a proponent of eugenics, a social movement aiming to improve the human "breed" by perpetuating certain allegedly inherited traits and eliminating others. While championing the intelligent, he pushed for the forced sterilization of thousands of "feebleminded" Americans. Later in life, Terman backed away from eugenics, but he never publicly recanted his beliefs.
Looking back, what are we to make of the man and his work? That's a question Al Hastorf has been grappling with. The former Stanford provost and vice president is the third director of the Terman study (he succeeded psychology professor Robert Sears), overseeing the project from his office in Jordan Hall. An amiable and restless man with a wry sense of humor, Hastorf has been pondering Lewis Terman's legacy for a chapter he's writing in a book on pioneering psychologists.
"There's a certain delicacy about talking about him," Hastorf begins, "because he was probably one of the first really big names Stanford had."
To most people at Stanford, the name Terman evokes another person entirely: Fred Terman, '20, Engr. '22, the engineering professor, dean and provost who helped launch California's electronics industry in the 1950s and who was Lewis Terman's son. But while Fred got his name inscribed on buildings on and off campus, Lewis probably had as much impact on people's lives, because he almost single-handedly introduced IQ testing in America.
**********************************
Gemini
Query:
Recent articles on Lewis Terman. How is he viewed in 2020s?
Reply:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)