William Stern
This article is about the German psychologist William Lewis Stern. William Stern is also the name of the father in the 1986-1988 "Baby M" custody battle.William Lewis Stern (
1871-
1938) was a
German psychologist and
philosopher noted as a pioneer in the field of the
psychology of
personality and
intelligence. He was the inventor of the concept of the
intelligence quotient, or IQ, later used by
Alfred Binet and other researchers in the development of the first
IQ tests. He was the father of the German writer and philosopher
Günther Anders. In 1897, Stern invented the
tone variator, allowing him to research human perception of sound in an unprecedented way.
Stern was born in
Berlin, the grandson of the German-
Jewish reform philosopher
Sigismund Stern .He received his
PhD in psychology from the
University of Berlin in
1893. He taught at the
University of Breslau from
1897 to
1916. In
1916 he was appointed Professor of Psychology at
University of Hamburg, where he remained until
1933 as Director of the Psychologic Institute. Stern, a
Jew, was ousted by
Hitler's regime after the rise of
Nazi power. He emigrated first to the
Netherlands, then to the United States in
1933, where he was appointed Lecturer and Professor at
Duke University. He taught at Duke until his death in
1938.
Stern was considered in his time as a leading youth psychologist and one of the foremost authorities in differential psychology. He introduced to intelligence testing the concept of the intelligence quotient or I.Q., the practice of dividing the developmental age by the chronological age. Stern's philosophy, which is laid down in several voluminous books, was expressed as a form of
personalism.
Stern also wrote about the
persona of groups of people. He viewed large institutions like the church as living entities with personalities. He is quoted in the Dutch book
De levende Onderneming ("The Living Company") by
Arie de Geus who uses Stern's philosophy to explain the longevity of certain companies like
Shell Oil and
Mitsubishi.
* Stern, W. (1912). "The Psychological Methods of Intelligence Testing" (G. Whipple, Trans.). Baltimore: Warwick and York.
*
General Psychology from the Personalistic Standpoint (1938)
*
Biography from
Indiana University*
Profile at Museum of the Jewish Diaspora
*
Biography at Radical Academy
