Arthur Jensen - Early Life

Early Life

Jensen was born August 24, 1923, in San Diego, California, the son of Linda Mary (née Schachtmayer) and Arthur Alfred Jensen, who operated and owned a lumber and building materials company. His paternal grandparents were Danish immigrants and his mother was of half Polish Jewish and half German descent. He studied at University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1945), San Diego State College (M.A., 1952) and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1956), and did his doctoral thesis on the Thematic Apperception Test. From 1956 through 1958, he did his postdoctoral research at the University of London, Institute of Psychiatry.

Upon returning to the United States, he became a researcher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he focused on individual differences in learning, especially the influences of culture, development, and genetics on intelligence and learning. He received tenure at Berkeley in 1962 and was given his first sabbatical in 1964. He has concentrated much of his work on the learning difficulties of culturally disadvantaged students. In 2003, he was awarded the Kistler Prize for original contributions to the understanding of the connection between the human genome and human society. In 2006, the International Society for Intelligence Research awarded Jensen its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jensen has had a lifelong interest in classical music and was, early in his life, attracted by the idea of becoming a conductor himself. At 14, he conducted a band that won a nationwide contest held in San Francisco. Later, he conducted orchestras and attended a seminar given by Nikolai Sokoloff. Soon after graduating from Berkeley, he moved to New York, mainly to be near the conductor Arturo Toscanini. He was also deeply interested in the life and example of Gandhi, producing an unpublished book-length manuscript on his life. During Jensen's period in San Diego he spent time working as a social worker with the San Diego Department of Public Welfare.