Naomi Weisstein
Naomi Weisstein (October 16, 1939 – March 26, 2015) was an American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, author and professor of psychology.
Growing up, Weisstein was inspired to pursue a career in science after reading the book Microbe Hunters written by Paul de Kruif.
[1] After completing many years of schooling and educational work, she became bedridden in 1983 due to chronic fatigue syndrome and after battling ovarian cancer, she died on March 26, 2015.
[2] Weisstein graduated from Wellesley College in 1961 and during her time there, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, composed music, did stand-up comedy and wrote for the school newspaper.
Meanwhile, Weisstein had to complete her laboratory work at Yale University where she met her husband, Jesse Lemisch, and close friend, Virginia Blaisdell.
Weisstein graduated at the top of her class and completed her PhD in three years,[6] despite gender discrimination from the male students and faculty.
[3] She was then denied entry to the Lamont Library on campus due to the idea that women would distract the male students studying inside.
Some of her acts included publishing articles within the field of psychology that detailed the lack of understanding of females,[8] as well as joining the Congress on Radical Equality.
[4] In 1969, she had a role in founding the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union with notable feminist community organizers such as Heather Booth and Vivian Rothstein; which included a rock band (Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band) with two notable songs written by Weisstein.
[3] She remained at Loyola University until 1973, but ultimately had to leave due to the institution's inability to provide her with the equipment and support necessary to continue her cognitive neuroscience research.
Weisstein stated that due to the prejudice, psychologists limit the discovery of actual human potential that women possess.
Her work showed that the brain does not passively receive information, but instead that the human mind actively assigns meaning to what it sees.
Weisstein focused on three main areas of research: visual detection, flickering and non-flickering regions perception, and figure-ground organization and spatial frequency.
[16] In 1986, Victor Klymenko and Naomi Weisstein found that spatial frequency differences have the ability to alter ambiguous patterns of images that are perceived through their background (i.e., figure-ground organization depicted in Figure 2).
