J. Richard Hackman was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from MacMurray College and his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Illinois. He taught at Yale for twenty years and then moved to Harvard. Professor Hackman passed away in 2013, due to lung cancer.
Hackman teaches and conducts research on a variety of topics in social and organizational psychology, including team performance, leadership effectiveness, and the design of self-managing teams and organizations. His most recent books are Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, which in 2004 won the Academy of Management's Terry Award for the most outstanding management book of the year, and Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make Them Great (with Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, and James Burruss).
He has received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association’s division on industrial and organizational psychology, and both the Distinguished Educator Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Academy of Management. He serves on the Intelligence Science Board of the Director of National Intelligence and on the Board of Trustees of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.