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Kistler Prize
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RECIPIENTS 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
2005 Recipient
Professor of Psychology
University of Minnesota
 Dr.
Thomas J. Bouchard Jr., Professor of psychology at the University of
Minnesota and
Director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research, was
awarded the 2005 Kistler Prize in recognition of his scientific
research regarding human individual differences caused by genetic and
environmental influences.
Born
in 1937 in Manchester, NH, Bouchard joined the Air Force at age 17 and trained
to be an aircraft and engine mechanic. He was educated at the University
of California at Berkeley (B.A., 1963; Ph.D., 1966). After three years on
the UC-Santa Barbara faculty, he moved to the University of Minnesota, where
he became Associate Professor in 1970 and Professor in 1973. He served on
the university’s Institute of Human Genetics Executive Committee for
twelve years, and was Chairman of the Department of Psychology for six years.
He has been Director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research
since 1983. In addition he was instrumental in the launching of the Minnesota
Twin Family Registry, for which he was a principal investigator. The Registry
included some 8,000 pairs of twins born in Minnesota from 1936 to 1955, plus
some 1,200 pairs of male twins born between 1971 and 1981.
The
work for which Dr. Bouchard is awarded the Kistler Prize is his scientific
research in the study of human individual differences, specifically through
the study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins. As Director of the Minnesota
Center for Twin and Adoption Research, Bouchard led the Center’s primary research project, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Launched in 1979, the project’s first phase continued for 20 years and involved psychological and medical assessment of twins separated early in life. The second phase was a longitudinal study of aging that commenced in 1987 and concluded in 2001. Bouchard’s research encompassed the whole spectrum of human individual differences, including mental abilities, intelligence, personality, vocational interests, social attitudes, values, psychomotor skills, psychopathology, emotion, expressive behavior, etc. His main contribution to the field is the demonstration – using twins reared apart, twins reared together, adoptees, and ordinary families – that
the largest portion of the variance in psychological traits among human
individuals is due to genetic factors. In fact, almost all reliably measured
psychological traits have a moderate to strong genetic component. Further,
being reared in the same home proved to have negligible influence on sibling/twin
similarity for many psychological traits.
Bouchard is the author of more
than 170 publications. Awards presented to him, in addition to the Kistler
Prize, include the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific
Speaker Award (1995), Galton Award from the Galton Institute for the Study
of Biology and Society (UK, 1995), and the Dobzhansky Memorial Award for
a Lifetime of Outstanding Scholarship in Behavior Genetics (2001). He has
served as Associate Editor of both the Journal of Applied Psychology and Behavior Genetics.
He also served as President of the Behavior Genetics Association and Vice President
of the International Society for Twin Studies.
“I think the knowledge we’re
generating is especially useful to families and parents. What we show is
that there are significant genetic differences between people and within
families. Parents ought to expect their children to be different, that those
differences are fundamental, that they are real.”
—From an on-stage interview with Dr. Bouchard at the 2005 Kistler Prize
Banquet
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