TOBACH, ETHEL

TOBACH, ETHEL (1921– ), U.S. leader in the field of comparative psychology and the use of psychological knowledge for the public good. Tobach was born in the Ukraine to Fanya (Schecterman) and Ralph Wiener. Two weeks after her birth her parents fled with her to Palestine to escape pogroms. When Tobach's father died nine months later, her mother immigrated with her to Philadelphia and became an activist in the garment workers' union. Tobach also worked at blue-collar occupations while attending Hunter College in New York City, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1949. Shortly after World War II she married Charles Tobach, a fellow radical who belonged to her union. He encouraged her to pursue graduate work in psychology at New York University, where she received a Ph.D. in 1957. Tobach spent her entire career at the American Museum of Natural History, rising to the rank of curator. Although she taught at a number of universities in the New York City area, for most of her professional life she was a full time researcher in animal behavior. Her research was voluminous and broad in scope. Her empirical articles focused on the link between stress and disease in rats; she also contributed extensively to the study of emotionality in rats and mice, and explored the biopsychology of development and the evolution of social behavior. Tobach was a consistent critic of genetic determinism; one of her most important contributions to psychology was the book series, "Genes and Gender," initiated in 1978 with Betty Rosoff. These books critically examined psychology's relatively unsophisticated view of the interactions between biological and social processes. Tobach was vice president of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1972, president of the American Psychological Association Division of Comparative and Physiological Psychology in 1984–85, president of the Eastern Psychological Association in 1987–88, and president of the APA Division on Peace in 2003–4. In 1993 she received the Kurt Lewin award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and in 2003 she received an award for Life Time Service for Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Foundation. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: R.K. Unger, "Tobach, Ethel," in P.E. Hyman and D. Dash Moore (eds.), Jewish Women in America, 2 (1997), 1404–6. (Rhoda K. Unger (2nd ed.)