Elizabeth F. Loftus

Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus, a Distinguished Professor, who studies human memory. Her work has made a enormous contributions to psychology, in general, an memory, more particularly. Loftus was born in Los Angeles, California on October 16, to Sidney and Rebecca Fishman. Though planning to become a math teacher, she discovered psychology at UCLA where she received her BA in 1966 in math and psychology. She went to graduate school at Stanford, studying mathematical psychology. While at Stanford, she became interested in long term memory. Loftus earned her M.A. in 1967 and her Ph.D in 1970, from Stanford. Loftus spent several decades teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle. Then in 2002, she was recruited as a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. Loftus's research has focused on the malleability of human memory. This extensive body of research has shown us how, why and when our memories can be changed by new experiences that we have after some key information is stored in memory. Those new experiences can contaminate memory, leading to transformations, alterations, distortions of what was previously experienced. She has been recognized for her research with eight honorary doctorates and election to numerous prestigious societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is past president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the American Psychology-Law Society. Loftus has won more than a dozen major awards for her scientific work. These include the two top awards from the Association for Psychological Science: the James McKeen Cattell Fellow ("for a career of significant intellectual contributions to the science of psychology in the area of applied psychological research") and the William James Fellow Award (for "ingeniously and rigorously designed research studies…that yielded clear objective evidence on difficult and controversial questions"). The list also includes the Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology from the American Psychological Association and the Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science from the American Psychological Foundation (for ”extraordinary contributions to our understanding of memory during the past 40 years that are remarkable for their creativity and impact”). She won the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology (to honor ideas of “great significance and impact”). More recently: 1) the John Maddox Prize from Nature Magazine (for “courage in promoting science and facing hostility in doing so”), 2) The Ulysses Medal from University College, Dublin, Ireland (“the highest honor bestowed by UCD”), 3) the Suppes Prize from the American Philosophical Society (“in recognition of her demonstrations that memories are generally altered, false memories can be implanted, and the changes in law and therapy this knowledge has caused”), and 4) the Lifetime Career Award from the International Union of Psychological Science (for “distinguished and enduring lifetime contributions to advancing knowledge in psychology”). Loftus’s memory research has led to her being called as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases. Some of the more well known cases include the McMartin PreSchool Molestation case, the Hillside Strangler, the Abscam cases, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and litigation involving Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Oliver North, Bill Cosby, and the Duke University Lacrosse players. Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Loftus’s research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology. The study identified the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and not surprisingly Freud, Skinner, and Piaget are at the top of that list. Loftus was #58, and the top ranked woman.