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Louis Guttman

Louis Guttman was an American and Israeli sociologist and statistician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, known for the Guttman scale and his work in social measurement.

1916 to 1987The Guttman scaleFacet theoryIsrael Institute of Applied Social ResearchSmallest Space Analysis

Born: 10 February 1916, Brooklyn
Died: 25 October 1987, Minneapolis
Occupation: mathematician, statistician, university teacher, psychologist
Education: University of Minnesota

Louis Guttman was born in 1916 in Brooklyn

Louis (Eliyahu) Guttman was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. He grew up in the Jewish community of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He studied at the University of Minnesota, earning a BA in 1936 and an MA in 1939. He received a PhD in social and psychological measurement in 1942.

From 1941 to 1947 he taught sociology at Cornell University. During World War II he was an expert consultant to the US Army's Research Branch, where he developed the Guttman scale.

In 1947 he immigrated to Palestine with his wife Ruth. He set up a research unit in the IDF that became the basis of the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research, which he headed and which was later named after him. From 1955 he was a professor at the Hebrew University, and his work covered scaling, factor analysis and facet theory.

He received the Israel Prize in the social sciences in 1978. He died in 1987 during a sabbatical in Minneapolis and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.