Donald Thomas Campbell (November 20, 1916 – May 6, 1996) was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term evolutionary epistemology and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Campbell as the 33rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Biography Campbell was born in 1916, and completed his undergraduate education in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he and his younger sister, Fayette, graduated first and second, respectively, in the class of 1939. After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, he earned his doctorate in psychology in 1947 from the University of California, Berkeley. He subsequently served on the faculties at Ohio State, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Lehigh. He taught at Lehigh University, which established the Donald T. Campbell Social Science Research Prizes. Prior to that he was on the faculty of Maxwell School of Syracuse University, 1979–1982, and Northwestern University from 1953 to 1979. He gave the William James Lecture at Harvard University in 1977. In June 1981, working with Alexander Rosenberg, Campbell organized an international conference held at Cazanovia, New York, to formulate the program of what he called an "Epistemologically Relevant Sociology of Science" (ERRES). By Campbell's own account, this project was at least premature. Campbell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1975, Campbell served as president of the American Psychological Association. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1993. Among his other honors, he received the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution award, the Distinguished Contribution to Research in Education award from the American Educational Research Association, and honorary degrees from the Universities of Michigan, Florida, Chicago, and Southern California. Work Campbell made contributions in a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, statistics, and philosophy. Multitrait-multimethod matrix Campbell argued that the sophisticated use of many approaches, each with its own distinct but measurable flaws, was required to design reliable research projects and to ensure convergent and discriminant validity. The paper he wrote with Donald W. Fiske to present this thesis, "Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix", is one of the most frequently cited papers in the social science literature. Blind variation and selective retention Blind variation and selective retention