Howard Rachlin (1935-2021)

Memorializes Howard Rachlin (1935-2021). Rachlin was born to Irving and Gussie Kugler Rachlin in New York City on March 10, 1935. He died 86 years later of cancer, leaving his wife Nahid, daughter Leila, and grandson Ethan. He received numerous recognitions: the Med Associates Distinguished Contributions to Basic Behavioral Research award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association, the Impact of Science on Application award from the Association for Behavior Analysis, a James McKeen Cattell Fellowship, continuous funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Mental Health (from which he received the MERIT award), visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and invited speaker at the Nobel symposium on Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Of himself Rachlin wrote: "He obtained a bachelor of mechanical engineering degree from Cooper Union in New York City [1957], where he learned to treat all scientific and practical questions as asking for answers rather than for self-expression; masters in philosophy and psychology from The New School of Social Research in New York City [1962], where he learned that the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts; and a PhD from Harvard University [1965], where B. F. Skinner and Richard Herrnstein taught him how to be a behaviorist." After teaching at Harvard, he joined Stony Brook University in New York in 1969, rising to the position of Distinguished Research Professor. Rachlin studied choice and decision-making; he was one of the founders of behavioral economics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).