Leo J. Postman, 85; Retired UC Professor Was Expert on Memory

Leo Joseph Postman, 85, a retired UC Berkeley psychology professor who was an expert on human memory, died April 22 of heart failure at his home in Marblehead, Mass.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Postman immigrated to New York City as a child and was educated at the College of the City of New York and Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and Indiana University before joining the Berkeley faculty in 1950; a few years later, he was named chairman of its department of psychology.

Postman devoted his research to perception, learning and memory. He concluded that forgetting is a result of interference from such things as past and current memories and the acquisition of new memories.

In 1961, he founded the Institute of Human Learning (now the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences) at Berkeley and directed it until 1977. He retired from the classroom a decade later.