Angell, James Rowland (08 May 1869–04 March 1949), academic psychologist and fourteenth president of Yale University, was born in Burlington, Vermont, the son of James Burrill Angell, president of the University of Vermont and later the president of the University of Michigan, and Sarah Swope Caswell, daughter of ...
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Angell, James Rowland (1869-1949), academic psychologist and fourteenth president of Yale University
Dan A. Oren
Article
Baldwin, James Mark (1861-1934), psychologist and philosopher
Robert H. Wozniak
Baldwin, James Mark (12 January 1861–08 November 1934), psychologist and philosopher, was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Cyrus Hull Baldwin, a businessman and sometime federal official, and Lydia Eunice Ford. Baldwin entered Princeton as a sophomore in 1881. There, under President ...
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Barker, Roger G. (31 March 1903–10 September 1990), child psychologist and pioneer
Harry Heft
Barker, Roger G. (31 March 1903–10 September 1990), child psychologist and pioneer in the naturalistic study of human development in community settings, was born in Macksburg, Iowa, the second of five children of Guy and Cora Barker, whose homesteader families arrived in the Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Guy Barker held a series of jobs: he was a farmer; served as the manager of a town’s general store; and then worked as a mid-level executive for a small insurance company in Des Moines, before returning to farming in eastern Alberta, Canada. Shortly after his Roger Barker’s birth, his family moved to the small town of Plover, Iowa, where he spent the first seven years of his life. Children growing up in small towns would later become his professional focus....
Article
Bettelheim, Bruno (1903-1990), therapist, educator, and author
Nina Sutton
Bettelheim, Bruno (28 August 1903–13 March 1990), therapist, educator, and author, was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Anton Bettelheim, a lumber merchant, and Pauline Seidler. Following his father’s death in 1926, he dropped out of the university to take over the family firm. Although successful in business, he re-enrolled ten years later to become, in February 1938, one of the last Jews to obtain a Ph.D. from Vienna University before World War II. While he was a philosophy student, aesthetics was his main subject, but he also studied psychology under ...
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Bryan, William Lowe (1860-1955), philosopher, psychologist, and educator
James H. Capshew
Bryan, William Lowe (11 November 1860–21 November 1955), philosopher, psychologist, and educator, was born William Julian Bryan on a farm near Bloomington, Indiana, the son of John Bryan, a Presbyterian minister, and Eliza Jane Philips. In 1876 he entered the preparatory department of Indiana University in Bloomington, which served as the local high school, and the next year he matriculated as a university student. As an undergraduate he developed his skills in public speaking and helped to revive the ...
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Bühler, Karl (1879-1963), psychologist and theorist of language
Mitchell G. Ash
Bühler, Karl (27 May 1879–24 October 1963), psychologist and theorist of language, was born in Meckesheim, in the state of Baden, Germany. Both his parents, whose names are unknown, were of peasant stock; his father was a railway official. After attending school in Meckesheim and in nearby Tauberbischofsheim, he studied natural sciences and medicine at the University of Freiburg, receiving a medical degree in 1903 for research on the physiology of vision. After further study at the University of Strasbourg, he earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1904. Accounts of the following months differ. Some sources state that Bühler worked briefly as a ship’s physician; others say that he studied under psychologists Carl Stumpf in Berlin and Benno Erdmann in Bonn....
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Burnham, William Henry (1855-1941), professor of psychology
Horace G. Marchant
Burnham, William Henry (03 December 1855–25 June 1941), professor of psychology, was born in Dunbarton, New Hampshire, the son of Samuel Burnham, a farmer and proprietor of the general store, and Hannah Dane. He entered Harvard in 1878, following three years of teaching while he prepared for the university; he graduated with honors in 1882. He taught at Wittenberg College (Springfield, Ohio) and at the Potsdam (N.Y.) Normal School before enrolling in graduate studies in psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. At Hopkins he was part of a group of students of ...
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Dollard, John (29 August 1900–08 October 1980), psychologist and sociologist
Nadine Weidman
Dollard, John (29 August 1900–08 October 1980), psychologist and sociologist, was born in Menasha, Wisconsin, the son of James Dollard, a railroad engineer, and Ellen Brady, a former schoolteacher. Following his service as a private in the U.S. Army during the First World War, Dollard attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he studied commerce and English and earned his B.A. in 1922. At Wisconsin, Dollard met the physicist ...
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Faris, Ellsworth (1874-1953), social psychologist and sociologist
Peter Kivisto
Faris, Ellsworth (30 September 1874–19 December 1953), social psychologist and sociologist, was born in Salem, Tennessee, the son of George Alexander Faris and Sophie Yarborough. Faris attended Texas Christian University (known at the time as Add-Ran University and then located in Waco), where he received a B.A. in 1894 and an M.A. in 1896. After completing his studies in civil engineering, he became a missionary in the Belgian Congo under the auspices of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society of the Disciples of Christ. He remained there for seven years, with an interlude of study at the University of Chicago in 1901–1902. While in Chicago, he married Elizabeth Homan in October 1901. She accompanied him to the Congo, where they remained until his ill health forced a return to the United States for good in 1904....
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Fromm, Erich Pinchas (1900-1980), psychoanalyst, social psychologist, and author
Keay Davidson
Fromm, Erich Pinchas (23 March 1900–18 March 1980), psychoanalyst, social psychologist, and author, was born in Frankfurt, Germany, the son of Naphtali Fromm, a wine merchant, and Rosa Krause. The marriage was unhappy, and Fromm was, in his words, an “unbearable, neurotic child” (Burston, p. 8). When he was twelve, a gifted, beautiful young woman close to his family committed suicide. The event impressed on him the irrationalities of human behavior, as did the First World War. When the war ended in German defeat in 1918, Fromm “was a deeply troubled young man who was obsessed with the question of how war was possible, by the wish to understand the irrationality of human mass behavior, by a passionate desire for peace and international understanding” (Burston, p. 10)....
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Holt, Edwin Bissell (1873-1946), psychologist and philosopher
Laurence D. Smith
Holt, Edwin Bissell (21 August 1873–25 January 1946), psychologist and philosopher, was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, the son of Stephen Abbott Holt, a Congregational minister, and Nancy Wyman Cutter. A precocious youth, Holt was encouraged in his interests in plant and animal life by his devoted but domineering mother. He graduated from Harvard in 1896 and studied medicine the next year at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He then began graduate work at Harvard before serving briefly in the army during the Spanish-American War. In 1900 he took a master’s degree at Columbia University under the psychologist ...
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James, William (1842-1910), philosopher and psychologist
Ignas K. Skrupskelis
James, William (11 January 1842–26 August 1910), philosopher and psychologist, was born in New York City, the son of Henry James (1811–1882), a philosopher and religious writer, and Mary Robertson Walsh. His grandfather, William James of Albany, a penniless immigrant from Ireland, became one of the richest men in New York State by exploiting a new method of extracting salt and speculating in land along the Erie Canal. His son Henry James used his inheritance to lead a life of the mind, devoting himself to metaphysics in the grand style and publishing a number of books and essays on the relations between God and man, influenced by the Swedish seer, Emanuel Swedenborg. Henry James suffered extensive financial losses, and his five children, although heirs to some commercial property in Syracuse, New York, had to concern themselves with making a living. Besides William, there were the novelist ...
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James, William (1842-1910)
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William James. Oil on cardboard, c. 1859, by John La Farge. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan.
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Keller, Fred S. (1899-1996), psychologist and educator
Michael J. Root
Keller, Fred S. (02 January 1899–02 February 1996), psychologist and educator, was born Fred Simmons Keller on a farm in Rural Grove, New York, the son of Vrooman Barney Keller, a salesman, and Minnie Vanderveer Simmons Keller. Keller's early education was disrupted by his family's frequent relocations, prompting him to drop out of high school. He then worked as a messenger boy and telegraph operator for the Western Union Telegraph Company in Saranac Lake, New York. In 1918 he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served in the field artillery at Camp Jackson, South Carolina. During World War I he was first stationed in France, where he experienced combat, then he was sent to Germany with the Army of Occupation. In 1919 Keller left the army with the rank of sergeant, and in September of that year he returned to high school at Goddard Seminary in Barre, Vermont, on an athletic scholarship for football. In the fall of 1920 he gained admittance to Tufts College (now University), where under the tutelage of Robert C. Givler he became interested in psychology and philosophy. In response to his poor performance, Keller left and worked a year for the Andover Press in Andover, Massachusetts. He then returned to Tufts and majored in psychology, graduating with a bachelors degree in 1926....
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Kessen, William (1925-1999), psychologist, educator, and historian
Josephine J. Fueser
Kessen, William (18 January 1925–13 February 1999), psychologist, educator, and historian, was born in Key West, Florida, the only child of Maria Lord Kessen, a third generation Key Wester, and Herman Kessen of Georgia, a ship's engineer with the Peninsular and Occidental Steamship line. The family moved to Fort Lauderdale when Kessen was ten; he graduated from high school at the precocious age of sixteen. The first in his family to attend college, Kessen pursued a variety of interests at the University of Florida, including history, acting, and radio announcing, but his undergraduate studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II....
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Krech, David (1909-1977), professor of psychology
Donald A. Riley and Mark R. Rosenzweig
Krech, David (27 March 1909–14 July 1977), professor of psychology, was born Yitzhok-Eizik Krechevsky in a small village in Russia, the son of Joseph Krechevsky, a salesman, and Sarah Rabinowitz. At the age of four Krech accompanied his family to the United States, where they settled in New London, Connecticut. Krech took to schooling, was a good student, and, according to his autobiography, soon became the “most educated American” in his family. In addition to the regular fare, he spent an hour a day in Hebrew School, where he learned some Hebrew and learned to read and write in Yiddish. His love of the Hebrew language and its literature endured throughout his life and remained long after he had rejected all formal religion....
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Ladd, George Trumbull (1842-1921), theologian, philosopher, and psychologist
Herman J. Saatkamp and Clay Davis Splawn
Ladd, George Trumbull (19 January 1842–08 August 1921), theologian, philosopher, and psychologist, was born in Painesville, Ohio, the son of Silas Trumbull Ladd, a businessman and treasurer of Western Reserve College, and Elizabeth Williams. Ladd graduated from Western Reserve College in 1864 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1869. Also in 1869 he married Cornelia Ann Tallman of Bellaire, Ohio; they had four children. He was a minister for nearly a decade, spending two years in a small church in Ohio and eight years in the large Spring Street Congregational Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ladd wrote and read feverishly throughout his life. Having a passion for scholarship, he grew tired of the pastorate and sought freedom in the academic world. He justified this transition by planning a defense of his faith in opposition to the increasingly scientific and secular world. According to his biographer E. S. Mills, “he would serve as the mediator between the old and the new so that the best of both worlds of learning and experience might be preserved.” In 1879 Ladd accepted a post in the department of philosophy at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Two years later he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and began his long association with Yale University. At Yale, Ladd was appointed professor of moral and mental philosophy....
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Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix (1901-1976), psychologist and sociologist
David L. Sills
Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix (13 February 1901–30 August 1976), psychologist and sociologist, was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Robert Lazarsfeld, a lawyer, and Sofie Munk, an Adlerian psychotherapist. Through his mother’s friendship with the socialist activist Friedrich Adler—unrelated to the psychologist Alfred Adler...
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Likert, Rensis (1903-1981), social scientist
Franz Samelson
Likert, Rensis (05 August 1903–03 September 1981), social scientist, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the son of George Herbert Likert, an engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad, and Cornelia Zonne, a former teacher. After spending several years as a civil engineering student, Likert received his bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1926. He then enrolled at Columbia University, from which he received a Ph.D. in psychology in 1932. In 1928 he married Charlotte Jane Gibson, with whom he had two children....
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Martin, Everett Dean (1880-1941), social psychologist, social philosopher, and adult educator
Amy D. Rose
Martin, Everett Dean (05 July 1880–10 May 1941), social psychologist, social philosopher, and adult educator, was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, the son of Buker E. Martin, a tobacconist, and Mollie Field. Martin earned his B.A. from Illinois College in Jacksonville in 1904. In 1907 he graduated from McCormick Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Congregational minister. That same year he married Esther W. Kirk; they had three daughters. Martin held pastorates in Lombard, Illinois (1906–1908), Dixon, Illinois (1908–1910), and Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a minister of the First Unitarian Church (1910–1914). In 1915 he divorced his wife, married Persis E. Rowell, and, as result of his marital problems, was forced to resign from the ministry. He had one son with Rowell, but this marriage also ended in divorce. In 1931 he married his third wife, Daphne Crane Drake....
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