He had come to the University in 1972 as a full professor, and had been emeritus professor since 1979.
Dr. Asch was born in Warsaw and came to the U.S. in 1920. He received his B.S. from the College of the City of New York in 1928 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1930 and 1932, respectively. He taught at Brooklyn College, the New School for Social Research, and Swarthmore College, and held visiting posts at Harvard and MIT. He was Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers University from 1966 to 1972, when he joined Penn.
Dr. Asch was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 1941-42 and 1943-44; a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1958-1960 and 1970; a Senior Fellow of the U.S. Public Health Service, 1959-1960; and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1976-77). He was awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal from Columbia University in 1962 and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association in 1967.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965, Dr. Asch served as president of the Division of Personality and Social Psychology of the American Psychological Association in 1957 and chairman of the its Committee on Academic Freedom also in 1957. He was also associate editor of Psychological Review from 1957 to 1962.
Dr. Asch is survived by his wife, Florence.
Almanac
March 5, 1996
Volume 42 Number 23
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