Barbara Tizard
Barbara Patricia Tizard was a British psychologist who studied how children grow and learn. She led the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London, from 1980 to 1990 and was Professor of Education from 1982 to 1990.
She was born on 16 April 1926 in West Ham, London. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she was raised by her single mother. She won a scholarship to St Paul’s Girls’ School and then went to Somerville College, Oxford in 1944. She began studying medicine but switched to philosophy, politics and economics, earning a BA.
She later did part-time postgraduate work at the University of London and earned a PhD on the psychological effects of brain damage. She lectured at the Institute of Psychiatry from 1963 to 1967, then joined the Institute of Education in 1967.
She married Jack Tizard in 1947 and they had five children. Jack Tizard died in 1979.
In 1997 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and was also a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She retired in 1990 and was named Professor Emeritus by the University of London. Barbara Tizard died on 4 January 2015, aged 88.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:27 (CET).