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A dropout and a chemist teamed up
Tajfel's Path
Tajfel was born into a Jewish family in Poland and immigrated to France in the 1930s. He lost most of his family to the Holocaust in World War II, and he changed over from chemistry to social psychology. He became a social psychologist at the University of Bristol.
Turner's Path
John Turner was a PhD student there. As an undergraduate he had dropped out of college a few times and ended up in regular blue-collar jobs, where his dealings with unions left him fascinated by group dynamics within a union.
Their Paper
The two began working together and wrote An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict, published in 1979, the paper that proposed social identity theory. It changed how psychology, and people outside academia, see the world.
How did Tajfel survive the war?
Tajfel, a Polish Jew, was studying in Paris when the war began, and he served in the French army. Germans captured him in 1940, and he spent the war as a prisoner while keeping it hidden that he was Jewish. After the war he worked with relief organizations helping refugees and survivors.
How did Tajfel shape European psychology?
In the 1960s, social psychology was dominated by American research. Tajfel helped found the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology in 1966, working with Serge Moscovici and others. Bristol under Tajfel became a center for European research on intergroup relations, and John Turner was among the students who worked with him there.