He received a Bachelor of Arts in English from
Harvard University in 1947, and a Ph.D. in psychology from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1957. He was on active service in the
United States Naval Reserve in 1951-53 during the
Korean War. He taught at the
University of Nebraska from 1957 to 1964, then took a position at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he remained the rest of his life. Even after retirement, he remained active in research and publishing. His book on Latent variable models (now in its fourth edition) remains very popular. He was a keen poet. His son is the American author and scholar
James Loehlin. Loehlin's research chiefly focused on the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in normal human personality traits and abilities; he was also concerned with racial differences and with computer modeling. He was involved in several twin family, and adoption studies, notably the Texas Adoption Project with
Joseph M. Horn and
Lee Willerman. He wrote on the
race and intelligence controversy. He was a Director of the
American Eugenics Society from 1968 to 1974. In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "
Mainstream Science on Intelligence", a public statement written by
Linda Gottfredson, published in response to popular criticism of the conclusions presented in
Richard J. Herrnstein and
Charles Murray's controversial book
The Bell Curve (1994). One of his PhD students was
Eric Turkheimer. In 1995, he took part in the
American Psychological Association task force writing a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research in response to the claims being advanced amid the
Bell Curve controversy, titled "
Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." == Selected publications ==