Henry Felix Kaiser (June 7, 1927 – January 14, 1992) was an American psychologist and educator who worked in the fields of psychometrics and statistical psychology. He developed the

Varimax rotation In statistics, a varimax rotation is used to simplify the expression of a particular sub-space in terms of just a few major items each. The actual coordinate system is unchanged, it is the orthogonal basis that is being rotated to align with those ...

method and the

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test is a statistical measure to determine how suited data is for factor analysis. The test measures sampling adequacy for each variable in the model and the complete model. The statistic is a measure of the proport ...

for

factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observed ...

in the late 1950s.

Life and work

He was born in

Morristown, New Jersey Morristown () is a town and the county seat of Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. ...

. Kaiser studied psychology at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, with a break in military service, where in 1956 he graduated with a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in Psychological and Educational Statistics. In 1957 he was appointed assistant professor at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

, where he became a professor in 1962. In 1965 he went to the University of Wisconsin as a professor of educational psychology. In 1968, he received an invitation to the University of California, Berkeley, which he accepted and where he retired in 1984. Kaiser provided fundamental contributions to psychometrics and statistical psychology. His contributions to

were central. Kaiser was president of the

Psychometric Society The Psychometric Society is an international nonprofit professional organization devoted to the advancement of quantitative measurement practices in psychology, education, and the social sciences. The society publishes a scientific journal calle ...

and the

Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology The Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP) is a small academic organization of research psychologists who have interests in multivariate statistical models for advancing psychological knowledge. It publishes a journal, ''Multivaria ...

and publisher of the journal ''

Multivariate Behavioral Research ''Multivariate Behavioral Research'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. The editor-in-chief is Peter Molenaar ( Pennsylvania State University). ...

''. Kaiser was married and had two sons and a daughter. He died in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

Selected publications

* Henry Kaiser: The varimax criterion for analytic rotation in factor analysis, ''Psychometrika'', Springer, New York, Vol. 23(3), September 1958

References

Arthur R. Jensen and Mark Wilson: Henry Felix Kaiser, Education, In: Academic Senate (Hrsg.): ''1992, University of California: In Memoriam'', University of California, Berkeley 1992, pp. 88–91
Online text on cdlib.org
/ref> Arthur R. Jensen and Mark Wilson: Henry Felix Kaiser (1927–1992): Obituary. In: ''American Psychologist'', vol 49(12), December 1994, p. 1085'' . Stanley A. Mulaik: Henry Felix Kaiser, ''Mulitvariate Behavioral Research'', vol. 27 (1), pp. 159–171 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kaiser, Henry Felix 1927 births 1992 deaths People from Morristown, New Jersey University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty 20th-century American psychologists University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty University of Illinois faculty Writers from New Jersey Psychometricians