| Paul B. Baltes | |
| Birth: | 18 June 1939 Saarlouis, Germany |
| Death: | 7 November 2006 Berlin, Germany |
| Age: | 67 years, 142 days |
| Country: |  GER
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Paul B. Baltes (18 June 1939 – 7 November 2006) was a German psychologist whose broad scientific agenda was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development. He was in the gerontology also a theorist of the psychology of aging.
Biography[]
Paul B. Baltes was born in Saarlouis, Germany on 18 June 1939. He is credited with developing theories about lifespan and wisdom, the selective optimization with compensation theory, and theories about successful aging and developing.[1] He received his doctorate from the University of Saarbrücken (Saarland, Germany) in 1967. After, Baltes spent 12 years at several American institutions as a professor of psychology and human development before returning to Germany in 1980. He was Director of the Center of Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Berlin, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.[2] At the Max Planck Institute for Human Development he founded the Berlin Wisdom Project and became a leader in the scientific study of wisdom. Baltes later became the director of the Max Planck International Research Network on Aging.[3]
He was also a founding member of the European Academy of Sciences, a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and a member and vice-president of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. Paul Baltes also became a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Some topics: life-span view of human ontogenesis that considers behavioral and cognitive functioning from childhood into old age using a family of perspectives that together specify a coherent metatheoretical view on the nature of development. Cohort effects, cognitive development, and the study of wisdom. He and his wife, Margarte B., proposed a systemic metatheory of a lifespan development as of three processes: selection, optimization, and compensation.
Baltes chaired (together with Karl Ulrich Mayer) the Berlin Aging Study and, together with the Sociologist Neil Smelser, he was co-editor-in-chief of the 26-volume International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Elsevier) which appeared in 2001.
Paul B Baltes died in Berlin, Germany, on 7 November 2006, after a battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 67 years, 142 days.
External links[]
- Wikipedia: Paul B. Baltes (Source, part. copy)