ABSTRACT
Fred Lord was a principal developer of the statistical theory that forms the foundation for the statistical methods used today in psychological and educational testing. With Melvin Novick, he wrote the definitive treatise on test theory, which was the culmination of the classical view of testing. The same book ushered in a new theory that has now largely supplanted the classical approach. Lord developed and extended the new theory and introduced many applications, including one to computer-based adaptive testing. He made many other contributions to the psychological measurement of individual differences in cognitive performance, and during his lifetime was viewed by his colleagues as the dean of statistical test theory.
