Historical Faculty

The Harvard Department of Psychology (together with the Department of Social Relations, which was folded into it) was home to some of the most eminent psychologists in history, including the founder of the field in the United States, one of the first women in experimental psychology (she invented "paired associate learning"), a Nobel laureate, two icons of the 1960s counterculture, the originators of the terms "identity crisis," and "six degrees of separation," and one of the twentieth century's pioneers in neuroscience. These biographical sketches of historic Harvard were written by Rebecca Sutherland and Steven Pinker.

Historical Faculty

Gordon Allport, American psychologist (Image Credit: Dr. C. George Boeree, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons)
Gordon W. Allport (Image Credit: Dr. C. George Boeree, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons)

Gordon W. Allport

(1897-1967)
Personality Trait Theory
Research on Predjudice and Discrimination

Gordon Willard Allport spent nearly his entire academic career at Harvard, completing both his bachelor’s degree and his PhD at the university, and...

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Edwin G. Boring, 1961 (Photographer unknown: Gift. Dr. Boring; Source: Images from the History of Medicine (NLM), Record: 101410611)
Edwin G. Boring, 1961 (Photographer unknown: Gift. Dr. Boring; Source: Images from the History of Medicine (NLM), Record: 101410611)

Edwin G. Boring

(1886-1968)
First Major Historian of Psychology
Visual Perception Research

Edwin Garrigues “Gary” Boring was an experimental psychologist and a historian of psychology.  He joined the Harvard faculty as an associate...

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Roger Brown

Roger Brown

(1925-1997)
Pioneer of the Modern Science of Language
Solidarity in Language and Syntheses of Social Psychology

Roger W. Brown was Professor of Social Psychology at Harvard University from 1962 to 1994.  Today Brown is acknowledged as the founder of...

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Jerome Bruner, circa 1936 at Duke University as a junior (Image Source: The Chanticleer 1936, Wikimedia Commons)
Jerome Bruner, circa 1936 at Duke University as a junior (Image Source: The Chanticleer 1936, Wikimedia Commons)

Jerome Bruner

(1915-2016)
Perceptual Organization, Cognition, and Learning Theory
The Role of Narrative in Psychology and Law

“Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.”
– from The Process of Education...

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Mary Whiton Calkins (Image Credit: Notman studio, Boston)
Mary Whiton Calkins (Image Credit: Notman studio, Boston)

Mary Whiton Calkins

(1863-1930)
Paired - Associate Learning Paradigm in Memory Research
First Woman President of the American Psychological Association

Mary Whiton Calkins was ready for an academic career before the patriarchal academic world of the late nineteenth century was ready for her. After earning...

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Raymond Cattell (Image Credit: Cattell family)
Raymond Cattell (Image Credit: Cattell family)

Raymond Cattell

(1905-1998)
Theory of Personality - 16 Base Traits
Culture - Fair Intelligence Tests

Raymond Cattell was an influential psychologist who developed new analytic techniques that allowed for more nuanced empirical measurements of the...

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Erik Erikson (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Erik Erikson (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Erik Erikson

(1902-1994)
Psychosocial Theory of Human Development
Psychobiography

Erik Erikson’s relationship with Harvard spanned decades, coinciding with some of his most influential works.  Born in Frankfurt, and trained in...

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Richard Herrnstein at the home of B. F. Skinner on July 30, 1981 (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons/ Baum, William M. “Richard J. Herrnstein, a Memoir.” The Behavior Analyst, vol. 17, no. 2, Oct. 1994, pp. 203–06. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392668.)
Richard Herrnstein at the home of B. F. Skinner on July 30, 1981 (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons / Baum, William M. “Richard J. Herrnstein, a Memoir.” The Behavior Analyst, vol. 17, no. 2, Oct. 1994, pp. 203–06.)

Richard J Herrnstein

(1930-1994)
The "Matcing Law" of the Allocation of Behavior
Intelligence and Class Stucture in American Society

In 1955, Richard Herrnstein received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, having worked with both B.F. Skinner and S. S. Stevens. Two years later...

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Jerome Kagan (Image Credit: Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo)
Jerome Kagan (Image Credit: Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo)

Jerome Kagan

(1929-2021)

Jerome Kagan was the Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He was one of the key pioneers of...

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Herbert Kelman

Herbert Kelman

(1927-2022)
Social Influence and Attitude Change

Professor Kelman received his Ph.D. at Yale University, where he worked with Carl Hovland in the early days of the Yale attitude change project. He first came to Harvard in 1957 as Lecturer on Social Psychology in the Social Relations Department.... Read more about Herbert Kelman

William James Hall, 13th Floor, Room 1304
p: 617-495-3816
Karl Lashley (Image Source: Harvard University, WP:NFCC#4)
Karl Lashley (Image Source: Harvard University, WP:NFCC#4)

Karl Lashley

(1890-1958)
The Representation and Processing in the Mammalian Cebral Cortex

Karl Lashley joined the Harvard faculty in 1935, and in the ensuing twenty years he expanded his research on the representation and localization of...

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Harvard crest

Timothy Leary

(1920-1996)
The Effects of Psychotropic Drugs

One of the stranger claims to fame of the Department of Psychology at Harvard is that it was once home to two of the leading figures in the 1960s...

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Eleanor Maccoby in 1997 at Stanford University, where she was the first woman to head the psychology department. (Image Credit: Linda Cicero/Stanford News Service)
Eleanor Maccoby in 1997 at Stanford University, where she was the first woman to head the psychology department. (Image Credit: Linda Cicero/Stanford News Service)

Eleanor Maccoby

(1917-2018)
Research in Child Development and Family Dynamics
FIrst Comprehensive Empirical Survey of Gender DIfferences

Although she spent the majority of her academic career as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, Eleanor Maccoby’s...

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David McClelland (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, 1997)
David McClelland (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, 1997)

David McClelland

(1917-1998)
Human Achievement and Motivation Research

An expert in human motivation, David McClelland joined the Harvard faculty in 1956, where he taught and conducted research for 30 years.  He was the...

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Black and white photograph of Stanley Milgram as a young man. (Image Source: Harvard Faculty Registry)
Black and white photograph of Stanley Milgram as a young man. (Image Source: Harvard Faculty Registry)

Stanley Milgram

(1933-1984)
Obedience to Authority
The Small World Experiment - "Six Degrees of Separation"

In 1954 Harvard’s Department of Social Relations took the unusual step of admitting a bright young student who had not taken a single psychology course....

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George Armitage Miller speaking at the first APS convention in 1989 (Image Source: Association for Psychological Science Annual Meeting, 1989)
George Armitage Miller speaking at the first APS convention in 1989 (Image Source: Association for Psychological Science Annual Meeting, 1989)

George Armitage Miller

(1920-2012)
Father of the Cognitive Revolution
Cognitive Psychology, Psycholinguistics, and Cognitive Neuroscience

“My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer.” So began perhaps the most famous paper in the history of experimental psychology. The Harvard...

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Hugo Münsterberg (Image Source: The Bookman.1907, p. 576)
Hugo Münsterberg (Image Source: The Bookman, 1907, p.576)

Hugo Münsterberg

(1863-1916)
Pioneer of Applied Psychology in Industrym Law, Medicine and Education

Hugo Münsterberg came to Harvard in 1892 with a doctorate in psychology, earned under the supervision of Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, and a...

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Henry Murray (Image Credit: Harvard University Archives)
Henry Murray (Image Credit: Harvard University Archives)

Henry Murray

(1893-1988)
Personality Research

Henry A. Murray completed his undergraduate studies in history at Harvard in 1915.  More than a decade later, with graduate degrees in medicine and...

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