Hans Jürgen Eysenck (/ˈaɪzɛŋk/; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a psychologist born in Germany, who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the living psychologist most frequently cited in science journals.
Eysenck was born in Berlin, Germany. His mother was Silesian-born film star Helga Molander, and his father, Eduard Anton Eysenck, was a nightclub entertainer who was once voted “handsomest man on the Baltic coast”.[2] (pp. 8–11). Eysenck was brought up by his maternal grandmother (his grandmother was a fervent Lutheran; after her death in a concentration camp, Eysenck found out that she “apparently” was from a Jewish family).[2][3] (p. 80). An initial move to England in the 1930s became permanent because of his opposition to the Nazi party. “My hatred of Hitler and the Nazis, and all they stood for, was so overwhelming that no argument could counter it.” (p. 40)[2] Because of his German citizenship, he was initially unable to gain employment, and was almost interned during the war.[4] He received his PhD in 1940 from University College, London (UCL) working in the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professor Sir Cyril Burt, with whom he had a tumultuous professional relationship throughout his working life.
By far the most acrimonious of the debates has been that over the role of genetics in IQ differences, which led to Eysenck being punched on the nose by a protestor during a talk at the London School of Economics,[14] as well as bomb threats, and threats to kill his young children.[15] This opposition came when he supported Arthur Jensen’s questioning of whether variation in IQ between racial groups was entirely environmental. (see race and intelligence).[16]
Eysenck thought the media gave the misleading impression that his views were those of a maverick outside the mainstream scientific consensus and cited The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy as showing that there was majority support for every single one of the main contentions he had put forward, further asserting that the idea there was any real debate about the matter among the relevant scientists was incorrect.[17][18]
In the context of this controversy, S.A. Barnett describes Eysenck as a “prolific popularizer” and exemplifies Eysenck’s writings on this topic with two passages from his early 1970s books:[19]
All the evidence to date suggests the . . . overwhelming importance of genetic factors in producing the great variety of intellectual differences which we observe in our culture, and much of the difference observed between certain racial groups.
—HJ Eysenck, Race, Intelligence and Education, 1971, London: Temple Smith, p. 130
the whole course of development of a child’s intellectual capabilities is largely laid down genetically, and even extreme environmental changes . . . have little power to alter this development.
—HJ Eysenck, The Inequality of Man, 1973, London: Temple Smith, pp. 111–12
Barnett quotes additional criticism of Race, Intelligence and Education from Sandra Scarr-Salapatek,[19] who wrote in 1976 that Eysenck’s book was “generally inflammatory”[20] and that there “is something in this book to insult almost everyone except WASPs and Jews.”[21] Scarr was equally critical of Eysenck’s hypotheses; one of which was Eysenck’s supposition that slavery on plantations had selected African Americans as a less intelligent sub-sample of Africans.[22] Scarr also criticised another statement of Eysenck on the alleged significantly lower IQs of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek immigrants in the US relative to the populations in their country of origin. “Although Eysenck is careful to say that these are not established facts (because no IQ tests were given to the immigrants or nonimmigrants in question?”[22] Scarr writes that the careful reader would conclude that “Eysenck admits that scientific evidence to date does not permit a clear choice of the genetic-differences interpretation of black inferiority on intelligence tests,” whereas a “quick reading of the book, however, is sure to leave the reader believing that scientific evidence today strongly supports the conclusion that US blacks are genetically inferior to whites in IQ.
