Weisstein, Naomi

Weisstein was born in New York City in 1939, the daughter of Mary Wenk and Samuel Weisstein. She attended Hunter College Elementary School, Bronx High School of Science, Wellesley College (B.A. 1961), and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1964). A National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, she taught there (1964-1966), at Loyola University (1966-1973), and at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Weisstein is a pioneer in cognitive neuroscience and has published major articles in Science, Journal of the Optical Society of America, and Psychological Review, among others. She is also the author of Kinder, Kueche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the Female (1968).

Active in the Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society during the 1960s, Weisstein was a founding member of the radical women's group, the West Side Group (1967), the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (1969), and the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band (1970). In 1980 she fell ill with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Disorder Syndrome and has remained bed-ridden, but she continues to write and participate in current scientific and feminist debates.

Naomi Weisstein was born in New York City on October 16, 1939, to Mary (Menk) Weisstein, a psychoanalyst, and Samuel Weisstein, a lawyer. After graduating from Bronx High School of Science in 1957, Weisstein went on to receive her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1961. At Harvard University, she won a Departmental Distinctions award and gained her Ph.D. in Social Psychology (1964) after two and a half years. From 1964 to 1965 she was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow with the Committee on Mathematical Biology at the University of Chicago, and in 1966 began teaching psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. In 1973 Weisstein became professor of cognitive psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, teaching courses and running her own data research lab. Over the next several years, she was awarded grants from major research foundations.

Weisstein was also an important figure in the feminist movement. In 1969 Weisstein became a founding member of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and in 1970 she founded the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band (CWLRB). Weisstein was physically active as both a scientist and a feminist until the early 1980s when she became bedridden from Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS). Although still bedridden in 2010, she continues to work and write. For related papers, see the finding aid for the Naomi Weisstein papers, MC 616 .