Laurence J. Peter

Laurence Johnston Peter (1919 to 1990) was a Canadian educator who called himself a hierarchiologist and is best known for formulating the Peter principle. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he began his career as a teacher there in 1941, received the degree of Doctor of Education from Washington State University in 1963, and in 1966 moved to California, where he became an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California and directed the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching. He became widely known in 1969 with the publication of The Peter Principle, co-authored with Raymond Hull, which argues that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.