"From everything I can see, the conclusions in [the book] are based on quite out-of-date research and are rather critical about quite out-of-date research," said Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology Irven DeVore.
Herrnstein made his name in behavioral science, not in research about IQ, Heyman said.
"He was very much respected for his early work," Bell said. "He took B.F. Skinner's work and gave it a very strong foundation in math psychology. There was no question that he had really earned his fur, so to speak."
Herrnstein Himself
The controversy over Herrnstein's work is nothing new. In 1971, he first proposed that genetic factors such as IQ could create social stratification in societies increasingly based upon achievement.
After Herrnstein's theory appeared in Atlantic Monthly magazine, students picketed lectures for his class.
But despite his incendiary work, colleagues who knew Herrnstein are unwavering in their praise of his personal merits. They say he was unfailingly kind, witty and knowledgeable.
Above all, they said he was principled.
"Dick kept us honest," said Professor of Social Psychology Robert Rosenthal. "He was often the only person on one side of an issue. He was a very important colleague precisely because he often disagreed with members of the department but was never disagreeable doing it."
Maher said that Herrnstein remembered how he had voted one year or two years before on certain issues and stuck to his beliefs.
"It was a matter of integrity to him that if he developed a principle, he should live with it," Maher said.
Herrnstein was also unusually dedicated to his students, professors said.
"He was always very willing to find out what the student perspective was and what the effect on student would be," said Secretary to the Administrative Board Virginia L. Mackay-Smith '78. Herrnstein was "a very good citizen of this community," said Secretary to the Faculty Council John B. Fox Jr. '59. At different times, he served on the Ad Board, the Faculty Council and the standing committee on athletics. Last year, he was appointed a member of the committee on the structure of Harvard College.
Whatever he wrote was not intended to hurt anyone, Heyman said.
"I don't think that anything he wrote was mean-spirited," Heyman said. "You could think of it as just the opposite, that he thought people were wasting their money with false expectations in programs" like Head Start.
"I think he believed he was working in a way to improve conditions for all people," Heyman said.
One colleague said Herrnstein should be evaluated not on one isolated controversy but on his entire body of work.
"When someone has been a colleague for thirty-plus years, you look at the whole of the thirty years," Maher said. "Most of us tend to evaluate or react to each other for what we see as the long-haul contribution the person is making to the scientific field."