Martin Theodore Orne, M.D., Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, died February 11, 2000 at the age of 72. He was a professor in the School of Medicine for 32 years before becoming emeritus professor in 1996. Born in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 in 1927, Dr. Orne received his M.D. degree from Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

 Medical School in 1955, with a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center

Massachusetts Mental Health Center

Massachusetts Mental Health Center is a historic building at 74 Fenwood Road in Boston, Massachusetts.The center was built in 1912 as Boston Psychopathic Hospital by Taylor Kendall and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994....

, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1958. Upon coming to Penn in 1964, Professor Orne established and directed the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, a research laboratory in the School of Medicine that has conducted uninterrupted scientific research for 36 years.

Dr Orne pioneered research into demand characteristics

Demand characteristics

In research, and particularly psychology, demand characteristics refers to an experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and unconsciously change their behavior accordingly. Pioneering research was conducted on demand characteristics by Martin Orne...

 illustrating the weakness of informing participants that they are taking part in a psychology experiment and yet expecting them to act normally. He was also well-known as a researcher in the field of hypnosis

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...

.

View the official website for the published papers of Dr. Martin T. Orne at the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/orne/