# Richard Herrnstein Harvard experimental psychologist and co-author, with [[Charles Murray]], of *[[The Bell Curve]]* (1994). Herrnstein died of lung cancer in September 1994, weeks before the book's publication, leaving Murray to defend it alone through the controversy that followed. His academic reputation rested on behavioral research — the matching law in operant conditioning — but his political significance comes from a 1971 *Atlantic* article, "I.Q.," and the 1973 book *I.Q. in the Meritocracy*, which argued that as societies remove barriers to opportunity, remaining inequality increasingly reflects heritable ability. That thesis is the intellectual spine of *The Bell Curve* and of the broader hereditarian argument the KB tracks under [[Scientific Racism]] and [[Meritocracy]]. > [!note] Stub — fill out > To expand: the matching law and his standing in experimental psychology; the 1971 *Atlantic* piece and the campus reaction; *I.Q. in the Meritocracy* (1973); *Crime and Human Nature* (1985, with James Q. Wilson); his role vs. Murray's in drafting *The Bell Curve*; funding questions around the Pioneer Fund sources cited in the book. ## See also [[Charles Murray]] · [[The Bell Curve]] · [[Scientific Racism]] · [[Meritocracy]]