Jerome Edwin Hirsch (September 20, 1922 – May 3, 2008) was an American psychologist known for his pioneering work in behavior genetics, and for his advocacy for social justice.
[3] Hirsch began his interest in behavior genetics in the 1950s, as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Edward C. Tolman and Robert Tryon.
[3] He later conducted multiple influential studies on the genetic origins of behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster, Dobzhansky's favorite species.
[3] Hirsch was an early and vocal critic of the work of Arthur Jensen, who argued that group differences in educational ability were heritable.
[11] In the mid-1960s, William Shockley tried to convince Hirsch to support his views on the heritability of racial differences in IQ.