Jews Among the 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the Twentieth Century

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What follows is a listing of Jews (and individuals of half- or three-quarters-Jewish descent, as noted) who are ranked among the one hundred leading psychologists of the twentieth century, according to a study conducted by Steven Haggbloom et al., entitled "The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century," published in Review of General Psychology (Vol. 6, No. 2, 2002, pp. 139-152)*. The study was based on journal and textbook citation frequency data, together with rankings submitted by 1,725 members of the American Psychological Association. (Only the first ninety-nine of the one hundred most eminent were actually reported.) The ranking of each individual is indicated in square brackets. The original study contained two errors: neither G. Stanley Hall nor Margaret Washburn should have been included. Correcting for these errors affects slightly the rankings of individuals who were ranked below them and opens up two additional slots, which are now filled by Leo Postman and Benjamin Winer.

Sigmund Freud [3]
Leon Festinger [5]
Stanley Schachter [7]
Abraham Maslow [10]
Erik Erikson¹ [12]
Hans Eysenck² [13]
Kurt Lewin [18]
Jerome Kagan [22]
Walter Mischel [25]
Jerome Bruner [28]
Lawrence Kohlberg³ [30]
Martin Seligman [31]
Ulric Neisser⁴ [32]
Herbert Simon⁵ [37]
Noam Chomsky [38]
Solomon Asch [41]
Stanley Milgram [46]
Lee Cronbach⁶ [48]
David Wechsler [51]
Joseph Wolpe [53]
Michael Posner [56]
Elizabeth Loftus⁷ [58]
Paul Ekman [59]
Robert Sternberg [60]
Julian Rotter [63]
Alfred Adler [66]
Alexander Luria [68]
Leonard Berkowitz [74]
Eliot Aronson [76]
Irving Janis [77]
Morton Deutsch [78]
Richard Lazarus [79]
Lev Vygotsky [82]
Robert Rosenthal [83]
Milton Rokeach [84]
Amos Tversky [91.5]
Herman Witkin [94]
Anna Freud [97]
Leo Postman [98]
Benjamin Winer [99]

NOTES
* See http://creativity.ipras.ru/texts/top100.pdf. For an updated list incorporating corrections to the original list, click on "Rank-ordered" under "Revised Table 4 | Errata" here.
1. Son of a Danish-Jewish mother, Karla Abrahamsen, and a German-Jewish step-father, Dr. Theodor Homburger. Prior to her marriage to Homburger, Erikson's mother was briefly married to a Danish Jew, Valdemar Isidor Salomonson. Erikson claimed, however, that his true biological father was an unknown, non-Jewish Dane. See Erik Erikson: a detailed evaluation and genogram study, by Monica McGoldrick.
2. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. Although Eysenck denied Jewish ancestry throughout most of his life, in his 1990 autobiography, he admitted that his maternal grandmother, who died in the Nazi concentration camp at Terezín, had been Jewish. In a recent paper, entitled "Hans Eysenck and the Jewish question: Genealogical investigations" (Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 103, pp. 195-199, December 2016), Andrew M. Colman and Caren A. Frosch present conclusive evidence showing that both of Eysenck's maternal grandparents had, in fact, been Jews.
3. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
4. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
5. Jewish father, mother of partial Jewish ancestry, self-identifies as a Jew, although not religiously. See Models of My Life by Herbert A. Simon (BasicBooks, New York, NY, 1991, pp. 3, 17, 112, 262).
6. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother; see A History of Psychology in Autobiography: Volume 8, edited by G. Lindzey (Stanford, Palo Alto, CA, 1989, p. 64).
7. Born Elizabeth Fishman; see http://williamcalvin.com/2002/OrangeCtyRegister.htm.

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