Retired UB Education Professor Paul Lohnes Dies at 72

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Paul R. Lohnes, a professor for 30 years in the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, died Feb. 16 in Dover, N.H., after a brief illness. He was 72.

Lohnes was noted for his many contributions to statistics and vocational psychology, as well as his interpersonal warmth, intellectual depth and sense of humor. Since his retirement from UB in 1993, he and his wife, Kathleen, had traveled extensively and enjoyed their waterfront home on Colony Cove, N.H. They previously lived in Snyder.

Born in Lynn, Mass., Lohnes completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University and doctoral studies at Harvard. He served in the U.S. Army from 1952-54 and taught at Newton High School in Massachusetts from 1954-56.

In addition to his work at UB, Lohnes was IBM Research Associate at MIT from 1960-62, and served as a professor and director of guidance studies for Project Talent -- the first large-scale, national study of American youth -- at the University of Pittsburgh from 1965-67.

Lohnes was author or co-author of eight books, eight monographs and more than 50 journal articles, and gave numerous national presentations. In the years prior to his retirement, he had developed innovative procedures for the statistical analysis of causal models in education and psychology.

Lohnes enjoyed a longtime professional collaboration with William Cooley of the University of Pittsburgh, whom he had met while they were graduate students at Harvard. The pair created many of the first computer programs for multivariate analysis, which they published in their first book, "Multivariate Procedures for the Behavioral Sciences" (1962), along with descriptions of the statistical procedures and computed examples from their research. It was the first such textbook in that field.

During the next 15 years, they published three more books on various aspects of educational research, building upon their early start in computer applications and data analysis. Lohnes joined Cooley at the University of Pittsburgh, where they worked on Project Talent and produced several monographs dealing with the career development of young adults.

To facilitate their work together, Cooley bought a summer home next to Lohnes' on Colony Cove.

"Since 1956, Paul was a central feature of my career," Cooley says. "It was a great collaboration, stimulated by a kind of mutual respect that few academics ever experience. Even in my retirement, he has had a great influence on my life. My entire family and I will miss him dearly."

Besides his wife of 51 years, Lohnes is survived by a son, Benjamin, of Andover, N.H.; a daughter, Mary (Andrew) Ehrenworth, of New York City, and a grandson, Jackson Ehrenworth.