Jerome Kagan – Brilliant, Wise and Warm-hearted
Jerome Kagan died on Monday, May 10, 2021. He was 92 years old. He was the Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology at Harvard for 40 years and was one of the giants in the field of Infant studies. He was a prolific author and indeed, his last volume was published just this year, A Trio of Pursuits: Puzzles in Human Development. In the preface of that book, he wrote that he always had had “irrepressible desire to understand the mental properties of our species”. Beyond his wisdom and his unrelenting search for knowledge, he was a paragon of generosity and unselfishness. Indeed, only, three days before he died he had agreed to speak in our Leaders in the Field Webinar in October of this year. Sadly, that was not to be but his immediate email response was a reflection not just of his boundless enthusiasm for science but one more example of his large-heartedness and his life-long readiness to share his ideas with colleagues, students and the general public, alike.
Left to right: Kevin Nugent, Leonard Rappaport, Jerome Kagan, Heidelise Als, Jack Shonkoff, Berry Brazelton and Joao Gomes Pedro at International NBAS and NBO Trainers Meeting at Harvard, November 2015.
Jerry was born in New Jersey and many of the questions that engaged him throughout his career were, he wrote, “traceable to his childhood experiences “in a modest, middle-class family in a city of 20,000 residents in central New Jersey during the depression of the 1930s”. He went on to say that “this setting made me acutely aware of the psychological properties that are linked to differences in social class, gender, ethnicity, and religion”. He was best known for his prolific work on the biology of temperament and the nature of individual differences and we, at the Brazelton Institute, were fortunate to join Jerry and Nancy Snidman in a study of the relationship between newborn state-regulation and infant reactivity. Those of us who were privileged to be present at the International NBAS and NBO Trainers meeting at Harvard in late 2015, will also remember his scintillating discussion on the links between temperament and gender, ethnicity and mental illness. He expressed his indebtedness to Berry Brazelton in terms of Berry’s contribution to his appreciation of individual differences in newborn behavior. The May 10th date is now auspiciously watermarked with the iconic pairing of these two giants in the field - Berry Brazelton entered this world in 1918 on the very date Jerome Kagan departed in 2021.
Jerome Kagan was a teacher who enlightened and inspired generations of students, not only with the breadth of his scholarship but with his Talmudic wit, which made him a supreme story teller. He always had stories for the rest of us, peppered with irreverent and occasionally subversive jokes. Even in latter years, he never lost his fascination with the world around him. Kurt Fischer noted that he had “an unbelievable enthusiasm about the importance of studying babies and children and connecting what we study to what goes on in children’s real lives.” In the words of his former students, Nathan Fox and Koraly Perez-Edgar, “he considered the scientific enterprise the source of life’s excitement”. Jerome Kagan blessed our lives with his unique gifts, so that he will always be remembered with fondness and gratitude across the world.
He is survived by his daughter Janet, his grand-daughter Leah and her husband Jon, and his great-grandson James. His wife of 70 years, Cele, died in 2020.
J. Kevin Nugent