Lewin, Kurt Zadek

(1890–1947)

   German-American psychologist. After teaching psychology and philosophy in Germany, Lewin emigrated to the United States in 1932. From 1945 he directed the research institute for group dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewin, a confirmed Zionist, wrote studies on the psychological problems of Jewish minority status. LEWIS (Los), David b. 1909. Canadian political leader. When he was twelve years of age, Lewis’s family arrived in Montreal as immigrants from Poland, and he started to learn English with the help of a dictionary. An outstanding scholar and an effective speaker, he went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship and was the first Canadian to be elected president of the Oxford Union. He practised law in Toronto and entered politics as a socialist, first as secretary of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), and then as a member of parliament in the successor party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), of which he became leader in 1971. In the general election of 1972, Lewis’s party gained thirty-one seats, giving it the balance of power in a House in which the two main parties, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives, were almost tied. He announced that he would support the party that undertook to reduce unemployment and to give more aid to the underprivileged.