LURIA, ALEXANDER ROMANOVICH

LURIA, ALEXANDER ROMANOVICH (1902–1977), Soviet psychologist. Luria was born in Kazan to a well-known physician. He graduated from the universities of Kazan (1921) and the 1st Medical Institute of Moscow (1937). In 1945 Luria was appointed professor in the department of psychology at the Moscow State University, a full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in 1947, and director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Restoration of Higher Cortical Functions, U.S.S.R. Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow. He was one of the founders of neuropsychology. The most frequently translated Soviet psychologist, Luria was familiar to psychologists the world over having acted as the program chairman of the 18th International Congress of Psychology, held in Moscow in 1966. He had wide professional interests which included brain mechanisms of mental operations (neuropsychology), with special reference to disturbances associated with brain lesions, the role of speech in mental development and control of child behavior, and mental retardation. He was a prolific writer and his books include Sovremennaya psikhologiya v yego osnovnykh napravleniyakh ("Basic Trends in Modern Psychology," 1928); Rech i intellekt derevenskogo, gorodskogo i besprizornogo rebyonka ("Speech and Intellect of Country, City, and Homeless Children," 1930); The Nature of Human Conflicts … (1932); Rech i razvitiye psikhicheskikh protsessov u rebyonka (with F. Ya. Yudovich, 1956; Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child, 1959); The Mentally Retarded Child (ed. and coauthor, 1961); Higher Cortical Functions in Man (1966); and The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968). Luria was a foreign member of the American National Academy and a member of many foreign research institutes in America and Europe. (Josef Brozek)