Otto Klineberg

Otto Klineberg (2 November 1899, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada - 6 March 1992, Bethesda, Maryland) was a Canadian psychologist. He held professorships in social psychology at Columbia University and the University of Paris. His pioneering work in the 1930s on the intelligence of white and black students in the United States and his evidence as an expert witness in Delaware were instrumental in winning the Supreme Court school segregation case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Through his work in UNESCO and elsewhere, he helped to promote psychology internationally.

Born in Quebec City, Klineberg was raised in Montreal. He obtained a Bachelor's degree from McGill University in 1919, a Master's degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1920, a medical degree from McGill in 1925 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in 1927. He remained at Columbia as chairman of the newly created department of social psychology. There, he was influenced by Franz Boas, a German anthropologist who created the cultural anthropology doctoral program at Columbia.

In 1929, he began research about the psychological differences between African Americans and Native Americans, which, though controversial at the time, helped to correct prior beliefs of race-based inferiority. Klineberg's research focused greatly on race problems, minorities, immigrants, nationality, and other topics related to culture and personality. In 1931, his views that there was no scientific basis for racial superiority was controversial.

He married Selma Gintzler in 1933, with whom he had a daughter and two sons. Klineberg was a polyglot and spoke English, German, Chinese in addition to the major Romance Languages.

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