In Memoriam: Betty Hansen

Kevin Langdon

Betty Hansen, former President of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, died April 16, 2000, at the age of 84.

I met Mrs. Hansen at the Triple Nine Society annual meeting in 1988. She was highly intelligent and knew things about a lot of subjects. Mrs. Hansen surprised me several times, in public and private correspondence, by finding pertinent additional data on a subject under discussion, or an argument I hadn't thought of. She knew things about psychometrics, planetary science, psychology, history, etc.

Later, she became President of the ISPE, an organization with which I have long-standing political differences, and, following a disagreement that arose in this context, I had no further direct contact with her, except that she wrote me a few letters in which she tried to mend fences which I never answered. Now I wish I had. We differed on certain issues, but I respect her lively mind and her contributions to the high-IQ-societies community.