Dr. Thomas Blass is an internationally acclaimed social psychologist and the recognized expert on obedience to authority as well as, more broadly, the research and legacy of Stanley Milgram. A Holocaust survivor born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II, Dr. Blass was a child when the Nazis occupied his country in 1944 and murdered 550,000 of his fellow Hungarian Jews (nearly 70%). Although many of his relatives had been deported to, and murdered in Auschwitz and elsewhere, Dr. Blass survived the war.
He received his B.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in social psychology from Yeshiva University in New York. For most of his career he has been at the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is currently a Professor of Psychology.