Ronald Kenneth Hambleton was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on June 27, 1943, the elder son of Kenneth Hobson Hambleton and Ethel Marion Ralph.  His father was serving in Hamilton, Ontario with the British Royal Air Force and his mother, Ethel, had immigrated to Canada with her parents from England as an infant. When Ron was one year old, he traveled to England with his mother and his younger sister, Carol (Carr) in a naval convoy, returning to Canada in 1950.  He grew up in a world of hockey, soccer, church groups, the Boy Scouts, and the RAF Club. He was a Queen’s Scout.  He received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1966 and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1969. He was hired at the University of Massachusetts as an assistant professor in 1969 and taught psychometric theory until retiring as a Distinguished University Professor when he was 75 and COVID made being in the classroom impossible. 

Ron married Else Lee Knudsen in 1966. They were very happy together.  They felt they had two families: their sons Kenneth and Charles and all the graduate students who became psychometricians with whom they have retained close ties.    

One of Ron’s greatest pleasures was coaching for the Amherst Youth Hockey Association.  He scheduled games for the entire association in order that he would not have to miss any of his own team’s practices or games because of his academic consulting schedule.  He didn’t have a lot of ego tied up in winning; he took pride in ensuring that each player, regardless of ability level, got equal ice time and he never sought an easy schedule.  He felt that playing higher-ranked teams gave his team valuable experience and that they played up to t

heir competition.  He was very proud of them all.

Professor Hambleton is widely regarded as one of the greatest psychometricians of all time. He won the Career Award from the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, the Association of Test Publishers, the International Test Commission, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. He served as President of the latter two organizations and received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Oviedo in Spain and the University of Umea in Sweden. He founded the psychometrics doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he published over 300 journal articles and books, and supported the careers of hundreds of doctoral students who became leaders in educational measurement and research. As Executive Director of the Center for Educational Assessment at UMass, he brought in over $10 million in external funding for research at UMass.

He leaves his wife of 56 years, Else, his sons, Charles (Liz) and Kenneth, his grandson, Dylan, and his sister, Carol.

A memorial service will be held Monday May 16^th at 11am in the South Congregational Church in Amherst, Massachusetts.  A reception will follow. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in his honor to the Ronald Hambleton Legacy fund, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, established to support UMass graduate students with assistantships and travel. Memorial guestbook at www.douglassfuneral.com