About: Philip Holzman

Philip Holzman (1922–2004) was the Esther and Sidney R. Rabb Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Harvard University and one of the world’s preeminent scientists in schizophrenia research. His landmark studies of oculomotor function documented the presence of abnormal smooth pursuit eye movements in individuals with schizophrenia (Holzman, Proctor and Hughes, 1973) and their clinically unaffected biological relatives (Holzman et al., 1974). He was one of the first to investigate the genetic basis of schizophrenia. Another key contribution to the study of schizophrenia was his work on language and thought disorder in individuals with schizophrenia (Holzman, Shenton and Solovay, 1986). He also discovered the presence of an active short-term memory deficit (known as working memory) in people w