Tribute Comments for Paul B. Baltes
Dear Colleagues,
Paul Baltes was president of Division 20 from 1976-77 and received the Distinguished Contribution Award in 1990. His death in November has been deeply felt throughout our Division. The Spring Newsletter of Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) of the American Psychological Association included a section commemorating his life, edited by Dr. Harvey Sterns. Comments were originally collected here, and will remain archived here.
If you wish to add your memorial comments, you may do so at any time. Instructions are beneath the links at right, below Dr. Baltes' picture.
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Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow APA Division 20 President
Department of Educational Psychology
226 Education Building, 1310 S. Sixth Street
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-2167 (office)
(217) 244-7620 (fax)
eals@uiuc.edu
http://apadiv20.phhp.ufl.edu/
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/all/
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posted by Michael Marsiske at 10:00 AM
20 Comments:
Please post your comments here.
Paul Baltes was an intellectual force whose influence ran broadly and deeply through psychology and the social sciences, from theory to methodology to the finest empirical work. As a primary architect of the life-span developmental framework, his scholarship has profoundly shaped the way human nature is conceptualized. By articulating the dynamic change, the potential for growth and compensation, and the meaning of loss in later adulthood, he helped to define the substance of this period in the life span.
Paul served as President of APA Division 20 from 1976 to 1978, and received the Division’s highest honor, the Distinguished Contribution Award, in 1990. He was a colleague, friend, and mentor to many in Division 20. The most extreme hyperbole seems inadequate to describe his loss. At the same time, he lives in his writings and the many fine scholars who were directly or indirectly mentored by him. For this, we are grateful.
Paul was a superb scholar and a true gastronome, oenophile, and raconteur. Fortunately, he forsook restaurant management for life span development. I fondly recall attending a dinner party (as a visiting scholar in Berlin in summer of 1993) that he and Margret hosted for Walter Mischel (attended by Ursula Staudinger, John Nesselroade, and another couple). After sparkling wine, we retired to the elegantly set dining room to enjoy an excellent mint-vegetable soup. Margret brought out a whole cooked salmon served with broccoli and spinach, accompanied with a lovely white wine. We moved on to a warm salad with steak chunks, and finally for dessert had wild blueberries with a slice of cherry filled ice cream. We retired to the living room for coffee/tea, after-dinner drinks, (e.g., kirschwasser) and wide-ranging conversation on topics from psychology to assisted death. The European Salons tradition was artfully nurtured at Paul and Margret’s home.
Paul Baltes had a unique and impressive intellectual impact on lifespan research about stability and change in adulthood and old age. He was one of the few researchers to build bridges between lifespan psychology and other disciplines in the social, medical, and biological sciences. His legacy is archived not only in scholarly texts but also in the minds of those with whom he had contact. During the 22 years that I had the privilege to work with him in Berlin, I never ceased to be amazed by his capacity to generate innovative ideas and new insights into development and aging. Learning about his lifespan developmental scripts and his ways of doing science was a never-ending task. My enduring memories of Paul’s voice and excellent advice will remain as a source of personal inspiration.
Jacqui Smith
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
I am pleased to share in the public commemoration of Paul B. Baltes. A larger-than-life figure in psychology and aging, he will be profoundly missed by the many and the few. His four decades of prodigious contributions to the field include a panoply of novel ideas, multiple programmatic bodies of research, frequently cited classic publications, memorable phrases and terms, and of course a virtual academic army of well-trained students and protégés. Although I experienced him as a giant in the field, I also knew him as a mentor, collaborator, intriguing person, and friend. He had a marvelous and fluent mind: Was there any topic he could not discuss with clarity or perspective? Across several years of my early career, and in two distant locations, Paul and his family were generous hosts to me on numerous occasions. I will always be grateful for their warm conviviality, discriminating but unpretentious culture, and open door to a home-away-from-home.
Roger A. Dixon
University of Alberta Canada
I began writing my dissertation on wisdom in 1995, and that was when I found the very first book on that subject (Sternberg, 1990). In particular, the chapter by Baltes and Smith was so influential that the other contributing authors, both those who agreed and who disagreed with them, used the Berlin paradigm as the primary frame of reference for their own studies
A few years later, when I was presenting a part of my dissertation at a conference, Dr. Baltes himself visited my poster! He was very casual yet inquisitive. At one point during our conversation, he asked me whether I was currently on the job market. In a split second without thinking, I said “no” because I had just accepted a job offer from a small Midwestern university. To this date, I regret that I didn’t ask him whether he was offering me a position at the Max Plank Institute where virtually everyone in this field seems to have been associated.
Masami Takahashi
Northeastern Illinois University
Many will write about Paul’s important contributions to research methods, theory, and new knowledge about life span development and aging, and about his powerful influence on those who studied and worked with him. I, too, appreciate Paul in those ways. But another side of Paul that touched me deeply was his mentoring while I was at Penn State. The articles he would put in my mailbox with “for keeps” noted at the top come to mind, as well as his introducing me and the other ADEPT project grad students to noted scholars at conferences and his encouragement of our nascent efforts to publish research articles. Even more personally, I recall with warm feelings the baby shower held for me at Paul’s home in State College, PA with the ADEPT team. Such a kind and gracious act of support for a humble grad student!
Rosemary Blieszner
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Paul Baltes’ work, and in particular the SOC framework, has influenced how I thought about aging before I began to study aging. His scholarship and insight will continue to guide the field in the future.
For over 30 years Paul Baltes was a flagship in the "convoy of social support" that has guided my professional life. While I was staff (1974-1979) for the SSRC Committees on Work and Personality in the Middle Years and on Life Course Development, Paul's views and understandings from a psychological viewpoint, in combination with Matilda Riley's from a sociological, drew me into the world of research on age and the life course. What a heady intellectual experience for a newly minted-PhD! Those experiences shaped my entire subsequent career. He opened many doors to research questions and research organizations, both in the USA and Germany. He was always generous in his intellectual and personal support, providing advice and guidance whenever I requested it. As I wrote a year or so ago regarding Matilda' passing, I now can say with equal feeling, "I mourn his death like the death of a parent."
Paul Baltes was sent by his mentor Günter Reinert to work with me at the University of Nebraska in 1964. He was a quick learner who soon surpassed his mentors. Baltes, John Nesselroade and I were able to introduce life-span developmental psychology to America when we were at West Virginia. Baltes pushed that concept further and built a first-rate human development department at Penn State. He then returned to his native country to head the Berlin Max Planck Institute on human development, and made major theoretical and empirical contribution to life-span development and the psychology of aging, becoming a major player on the German and international scene. He was a good friend and constant intellectual challenger to me. I will miss him greatly.
Psychology has lost a brilliant scientist and an important voice. Gerontology bemoans the loss of one of its most forceful and exceptional advocates. Paul Baltes' death leaves a deep void but he also leaves a large and strong network of scholars that had worked with him. He liked to call this network his academic kin. His generativity bestows continuity upon him beyond his death.
Paul was the rarest of human beings. He had extraordinary gifts of intellect, creativity, drive, sensitivity, and insight into the human condition. These gifts alone set Paul apart from, well, just about everyone. What makes him without peer, however, was his ability to use these gifts in the most effective way possible, as well as his generativity and generosity to others-which has resulted in a legacy that will remain a permanent part of our culture. There is no other psychologist who has trained so many internationally-visible, accomplished scientists while simultaneously establishing and expanding an internationally-recognized research institute. In the context of these monumental achievements, it is hard to imagine how such a man could count so many of us as close friends-we all know he always found the time for each one of us. In addition to that, he loved his family deeply. It is impossible to remember Paul without commenting on his deep love for Margret Baltes and then, after her death, his joy in his new love and marriage to Christine Windbichler. In my last private conversation with Paul, he mentioned repeatedly the depth of his love for Christine, as well as his children Boris and Anushka. All of us will miss his joy, his compassion, that characteristic twinkle in his eye, his ability to love and to embrace life- both triumphs and tragedy—with grace, courage, humor, and optimism. Paul had a joie de vivre that was unparalleled. Paul Baltes was a citizen of the world. He did not stand on the shoulders of giants...he was a giant.
Paul was one of the most brilliant psychological scientists of the twentieth century, as well as a remarkable human being. I was crushed upon learning of his death, not having even been aware he was ill. What impressed me so deeply about Paul was his willingness to take on leadership roles in psychology and then use those positions positively to impact the field. His students and junior colleagues have been remarkably successful, in large part because of his brilliant mentorship. Paul showed great courage when he took on a field—wisdom—that few have studied at all and even fewer have studied empirically. He and his colleagues then went on to create the most influential program of research in this area that has ever been undertaken. Wisdom is an extremely difficult construct to conceptualize and operationalize, and Paul succeeded brilliantly in doing both. I think about Paul often, miss him, and feel that we were all cheated by his premature death.
Staudinger and Baltes (1996) reported that wisdom could be socially facilitated; both talking with a close partner and engaging in an inner dialogue (with an imagined close partner) best facilitated wisdom-related performance. For me, Paul Baltes always has been—and always will be—an important voice in my inner dialogues. Before I ever met him, he was one of written forces that urged me to think about cognitive plasticity and real world cognition, and led me to Penn State. During my postdoctoral years in Berlin, he modeled for me (and many others) an incisiveness of learned opinion, a strategy for clearly communicating findings, and a commitment to knowing what one's peers had done and were doing. He did this all with a grace and generosity that I have not seen before or since. When I firs applied for jobs, his was the voice I took with me into negotiations, knowing that he would be much better at bargaining than I. Now though he has passed, he will remain a critically important source of direction and inspiration. I will miss hearing the real voice, but I treasure the remnants of it that remain—in me, and in the many students and colleagues he enriched with his contributions.
Dr. Paul Baltes will be remembered as a great scholar by all in the field of Lifespan Psychology. To me he was a great insipiration during my graduate life at Penn State. I was most impressed by his ability to add methodological rigor to the study of important topics like wisdom, goal pursuit and longing (which had been left by mainstream psychologists on the wayside) or got out of fad. He researched what was important rather than trendy and given his position made it the trend. Lifespan psychology will miss his leadership.
Paul used to say to his students that you were only a student for a little while but that you were a colleague for life. In my case, it was a 39-year relationship that was filled with many wonderful professional and personal moments. My memory of the excitement of attending as a student the first Life-Span Developmental Psychology Conference at West Virginia University organized by Paul and Larry Goulet with Warner as department chair has not gone away after all these years. The conference set the stage for a momentous future and years of contributions by Paul and so many. For those of us who were early students, it is amazing how much of our understanding of life-span development was already present in Paul's thinking in the late 1960's. From then on it was an ongoing tutorial as new articles, books and chapters emerged. I will miss those collections of publications that would arrive with a card that said "Mit besten Gruessen" "With best wishes". We shared accomplishments of our children.
When asked to comment about graduating from West Virginia University's Life-Span program that continues to carry the Baltes tradition, I realized that the techniques I take for granted every day as I teach, came from that strict lifespan research tradition. The Introduction to Research Methods: Life-span Developmental Psychology text co-authored by Baltes, Reese, and Nesselroade became a companion those years of graduate school, and currently sits on my bookshelf for reference today. How fortunate I was to graduate from such a program. Clare Mehta. Current WVU Graduate Student: Paul Baltes certainly left his legacy. His theoretical contributions are an integral part of the training we receive, and in our core developmental classes we read his work. Even first year graduate students know who he is and how he shaped life span developmental psychology.
My first personal interaction with Paul occurred during a GSA conference when I was a first-year graduate student. My thesis chair, Harvey Stems, and I were talking during the Opening Reception ceremony. A colleague approached Harvey and after chatting for a moment, Harvey turned to introduce me to the newcomer, Paul Baltes. Of course, as a new grad student, I was in awe. And then Harvey did the unthinkable - he actually left! Paul stayed and spoke with me for about 30 minutes regarding the importance of validity and reliability as I began to consider measures I would use in my Master's thesis project. I was thrilled and impressed that someone so "famous" would speak with graduate students. Looking back, I am even more impressed by his generous and humble spirit. Now as a faculty member in the Life Span Developmental program at WVU, I work in an environment that honors Paul's spirit and intellect by encouraging graduate students (and faculty) to always think critically about research, but kindly about people.
I recall a conversation I had with Paul shortly after I joined the faculty at WVU in 1996. When I mentioned WVU, he replied, "Ah, West Virginia, my favorite place." I have since wondered why Paul, who seemed so cosmopolitan, recalled West Virginia as his favorite place. Perhaps it was his memories of the years that he and Margret spent together while he was a WVU faculty member and she completed her graduate training in what was then the experimental program. Perhaps it was the collegia! relationships and scholarly exchanges that grew out of the now legendary West Virginia Conferences on Life-Span Developmental Psychology. Perhaps it was both. Whatever the reason, I like to think that we honor Paul and his fondest memories of West Virginia by continuing to train students as life-span developmental psychologists. The life-span theory and research methods that he and his colleagues, Hayne W. Reese, John Nesselroade, and K. Warner Schaie originated at WVU are the cornerstones upon which the developmental program was founded in 1966. Today, along with the extensions of life-span theory and methods by Paul and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute, (Ulman Lindenberger, Jacqui Smith, and Ursula Staudinger), these cornerstones remain firmly in place and provide the foundation for training the next generation of life-span developmental psychologists.
I was shocked and saddened to see Paul's name in the list of passings at the back of American Psychologist. Long out of the lifespan development loop, I am still guided by the many Paul Baltes' papers that I read during graduate school. I recall with fondness a meeting of the Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta some 17 years ago when Tim Salthouse, during an articulate introduction before Paul's invited talk, declared that "...when I grow up I want to be Paul Baltes...". All of us in the room knew exactly how he felt and what he meant. That shared sentiment said a lot more about Paul than it said about Tim.
Many scientists have illustrious and productive careers that leave a legacy of many useful tidbits and mini-models. Paul's career was one of those that leaves behind a legacy of providing a perspective on how to think about psychology and about development, both through his own writings, and the impact he had on those who studied under him or worked alongside him. All too rare, and all the more reason to mourn his passing.
Mark Hammer
Ottawa, Canada
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