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.

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