Ann Leigh Minturn
July 1, 1928 - Oct. 31, 1999

William Lambert
Ithaca, New York

A.Leigh Minturn, professor emerita of Social Psychology at the University of Colorado, was killed in unknown and possibly horrific conditions in the crash of a plane en route to Cairo (Egypt Air Flight 990 Nantucket, MA.) on October 31. She is said to have looked forward to this return to Cairo because the trip included a visit to Petra, in Jordan, a place she wanted much to visit. World traveller, knower of the world, a leading person in the recent move of social psychology into comparative cross-cultural analysis, she was long a member, and a past president of the Society for Cross Cultural research.

Leigh's life, her education at Mr. Holyoke and Harvard, her marriage (for a time to Harry Triandis), her field work (mainly to India in the l950's with occasional follow-ups as long as thirty years later), her wide travels (to professional meetings, to visit friends or incessantly on her own), and even most of her colleagues (including Beatrice and John Whiting, Harry Triandis, Jerome Bruner and many others who published with her), were the heady stuff that gave meaning and substance to her strong, high, presence and related style of criticism. She was of our best all along, and knew it.

She grew in a two-person family under the influence of her charming and strong mother, Emma, an upper class woman who managed an expensive building a block or so from the Drake Hotel in Chicago, and she attended the best schools (including Mt. Holyoke and Harvard). Her mother was a fine model for a ground-breaking and adventurous person. As the Denver Post reports, Emma moved from Chicago to New Mexico after graduating from college and travelled to remote American Indian homes by horseback to teach blind children (the source for this is Shelley Calisher, a friend and colleague.)

Leigh's research began with experimental work in perception and learning at Harvard. She moved to Cornell as a research associate, partly as a Ford foundation research fellow. Here she worked together with the late A. L. Baldwin and the present writer on a broad cross-cultural study focussed around a model for aggressive behavior, particularly of children. Several extensive seminars were developed and much evaluation of variables from a large sample of tribal groups was collected, analyzed and published. The attendant data on female cultural status, studies of the interpenetration of one realm of culture into another realm (does the religious practices focus include heavy or light economic foci?), leaning much on the very original ideas of William Nydegger, have not seen adequate publication even yet. However, interesting discoveries of the correlates (and plausible causal factors) of malevolent as compared to benevolent deities (as well as the plausible effects of such different deities on the training of children) received publication in the social psychological literature, along with work on cultural differences in the perceived agents of frustration and the related choice of targets of aggression.

A strong presence, bordering on the aristocratic, knitting through a scientific meeting and facing questions with characteristic vigor and courage.

The major publications were more broad in scope, and very much ahead of the times. Mothers of Six Cultures (with the present writer in a minor role) provided new insights into the probably human-wide role of mothers and insight into some of the variables which shape the cultural differences in this role. This book has been under-read and appreciated. Her major work was her original field analysis from India: The Rajputs of Khalapur, a fine socialization ethnography in a modern form (1966), and the follow up analysis of socialization of the next generation of the same families (1993), Sita's daughters: Coming Out of Purdah. The latter stays within the limits of her data (a strong scientific value), but manages at the same time to highlight immense changes, and even more impending changes, in one of the most complex cultures in the modern world.
Viewing her Vita one sees again how publication lists often do not represent the value of scholars. Leigh's grasp of cross-cultural problems and methods was very great and made its appearance above all in personal discussions and in her reactions to reports at meetings.

Many will remember Leigh (and will learn to miss her greatly): a strong presence, bordering on the aristocratic, knitting through a scientific meeting and facing questions that arose with characteristic vigor and courage, drawing upon immense knowledge from cross-cultural lore and generalizations, to systematic, well-planned research findings and the growing cross-cultural data from experiments. Her treatment of the topics brought up by others was the same as her treatment of her own work: it was placed in the highest level of criticism fitting to the data and status of the problem. No perfectionist or simple one-method judgements came from her: she was versatile in all the sources of cross-cultural knowledge and her quick wit brought that wide wisdom to bear fruitfully on many, many topics. A consummate professional behavioral scientist. One of our best and brightest, lost in a terrible accident of apparently unnecessary origin. This is a tragedy.

John Whiting 1908-1999 John Whiting died peacefully on May 13, 1999 at the age of 91 at Chilmark and Tisbury Great Pond in Martha's Vineyard, where he was born. He is survived by his wife and lifelong collaborator, Beatrice Whiting. Much of the theoretical basis for cross-cultural psychology can be traced to the work of the Whitings and their collaborators, including Leigh Minturn and William Lambert. Full obituaries of John Whiting can be found in the Fall, 1999 Society for Cross-Cultural Research Newsletter and the Harvard Gazette. The SCCR Newsletter was edited by Leigh.

Durganand Sinha The Durganand Sinha Trust for Social Sciences sponsored the first Durganand Sinha Memorial Lecture on 1st November 1999 at the Department of Psychology, University of Allahabad. The lecture was delivered by John Berry of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.

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