World expert on values to receive Israel Prize

Prof. Shalom Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will receive the Israel Prize in Psychological Research on the evening following Independence Day, Education Minister Yuli Tamir announced Tuesday. For the last 40 years, said the judges panel, Schwartz has conducted research on personal and cultural values and developed a theory about the content and universal structure of the human value system. He has also influenced organizational behavior, marketing and political and developmental psychology, the panel said. Born on Long Island in New York in 1936, Schwartz is the son of a rabbi and a teacher of Judaism. In 1952, at the age of 17, he began academic studies,earning a BA in comparative literature at Columbia University and at the same time earning a BA in Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He then went on to study social psychology at Columbia and earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan. Already a full professor at the University of Wisconsin's sociology department, Schwartz came to Israel as a visiting professor in Hebrew University's psychology department between 1971-1973. He came on aliya with his wife and children in 1979 and joined the university's faculty, heading the psychology department from 1984 to 1986. He has travelled around the world to study various cultures and values and compare them, taking data from over 200 samples comprising over 100,000 people. Schwartz is regarded today as the world's leading expert on values and inter-cultural psychology.