Adler, Alfred (06 February 1870–28 May 1937), physician and psychological theorist, was born in Rudolfsheim, near Vienna, Austria, the son of Leopold Adler, a grain merchant, and Pauline Beer. Adler was born into a lower middle-class, religiously nonobservant, and ethnically assimilated Jewish family in Austria. The death of a close younger brother in early childhood and Adler’s own near-death from illness the following year, at the age of five, seem to have inspired his interest in a medical career. A mediocre student, he attended several Viennese private schools and then began study at the University of Vienna in the fall of 1888....
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Adler, Alfred (1870-1937), physician and psychological theorist
Edward Hoffman
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Gray, John Purdue (1825-1886)
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Gray, John Purdue (1825-1886), physician, alienist, and asylum superintendent
Daniel J. Malleck
Gray, John Purdue (06 August 1825–29 November 1886), physician, alienist, and asylum superintendent, was born in Half Moon, Pennsylvania, the son of Peter D. Gray, a Methodist minister and farmer, and Elizabeth Purdue. He received his early education at Bellefonte Academy and Dickinson College, from which he graduated with an A.M. in 1846. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1849 and immediately becoming resident physician at Blockley Hospital in Philadelphia....
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Johnson, Wendell Andrew Leroy (1906-1965), speech pathologist and psychologist
David B. Baker
Johnson, Wendell Andrew Leroy (16 April 1906–29 August 1965), speech pathologist and psychologist, was born in Roxbury, Kansas, the son of Andrew Robert Johnson and Mary Helena Tarnstrom, farmers. Johnson began to stutter at an early age, a fact that had a profound impact on his personal and professional development. To compensate for his speech problem, Johnson filled his childhood by reading books from his father’s library and by excelling in academics and athletics. He acquired a strong desire to express himself through writing....
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Mahler, Margaret S. (1897-1985), physician and psychoanalyst
John B. McDevitt
Mahler, Margaret S. (10 May 1897–06 October 1985), physician and psychoanalyst, was born in Sopron, Hungary, the daughter of Gusztav Schonberger, a physician, and Eugenia Wiener. Her father, a prominent public health officer, encouraged her scientific aptitude and interests. She attended the medical schools of the universities of Budapest, Munich, and Jena, graduating in 1922, after which she practiced pediatrics and child psychoanalysis in Vienna. She married Paul Mahler in 1936 (they would have no children) and moved to New York City in 1938; there she became well known as a gifted clinician, teacher, and researcher....
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Scripture, Edward Wheeler (1864-1945), psychologist, phoneticist, and speech therapist
Michael M. Sokal
Scripture, Edward Wheeler (21 May 1864–31 July 1945), psychologist, phoneticist, and speech therapist, was born in Mason, New Hampshire, the son of Orin Murray Scripture, a New York commodity trader, and Mary Frances Wheeler. After graduating from the College of the City of New York with an A.B. in 1884, Scripture studied at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig, and Zurich. The new experimental psychology then emerging from philosophy in Europe impressed him, as it did many other young Americans studying abroad. His 1891 Leipzig Ph.D. dissertation, which was directed by the influential psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, experimentally addressed the associative course of thought and won him a brief appointment at Clark University as fellow and assistant editor of university president ...
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Sheldon, William Herbert (1898-1977), psychologist and physician
Sarah W. Tracy
Sheldon, William Herbert (17 November 1898–16 September 1977), psychologist and physician, was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, the son of William Herbert Sheldon, a jeweler, and Mary Abby Greene. Little is known about Sheldon’s parents, but the psychologist was very close to his father, an amateur naturalist, hunting guide, and professional breeder as well as a judge of sporting dogs and poultry. William Herbert Sheldon, Sr., who is said to have been a close friend of psychologist and philosopher ...
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Sidis, Boris (1867-1923), psychologist, physician, and pioneer in the field of psychopathology
Eugene Taylor
Sidis, Boris (12 October 1867–24 October 1923), psychologist, physician, and pioneer in the field of psychopathology, was born in Kiev, Russia, the son of Moses Sidis, a well-to-do merchant and intellectual, and Mary Marmor, both Ukranian Jews. Under his father’s tutelage, Boris showed early intellectual promise, developing an interest in poetry, languages, and history. During the czarist pogroms against the Jews in the 1880s, he was arrested for teaching peasants how to read and write. He spent two years in solitary confinement and withstood beating and torture before his father was able to secure his freedom. He immediately escaped from Russia and went, nearly penniless, to New York in 1887. While tutoring Russian immigrants, he met Sarah Mandelbaum. In 1891 Sidis went on to Boston, where Mandelbaum soon joined him. She enrolled at the Boston University Medical School, and he continued to work and study. At her urging, he qualified to enter Harvard as a special student in 1892, and he received an A.B. in 1894. Also in 1894 he married Mandelbaum; they had two children....
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Tildon, Toussaint Tourgee (1893-1964), physician and psychiatrist
Elizabeth D. Schafer
Tildon, Toussaint Tourgee (15 April 1893–22 July 1964), physician and psychiatrist, was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of John Wesley Tildon, a physician, and Margaret Hilburn. Tildon received a bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1912. He then studied pre-law at Harvard for one year before entering medical school at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. He transferred to Harvard, earning an M.D. in 1923 and specializing in psychiatry and neurology....