Robert S. Woodworth (1869-1962): Career overview and contemporary significance
Paul F. Ballantyne, Ph.D.
pballan@comnet.ca
Woodworth, Robert Sessions (1869-1962), American psychologist. After receiving a 1891 bachelor degree in philosophy at Amherst College (Massachusetts), --where his first contact with psychology was through a somewhat antiquated text (William Carpenter'sPrinciples of Mental Physiology[1874])-- Woodworth taught various secondary and college level courses in science and mathematics while reading William James and G.S. Hall to update his psychological knowledge.
In the autumn of 1895, he entered graduate studies at Harvard dividing his time evenly between Josiah Royce and James (receiving an M.A. in philosophy, 1897). Both James and Royce encouraged Woodworth to pursue further training in the expanding field of American psychology. In accordance with such advise, Woodworth moved on to Columbia University to study under James McKeen Cattell whom had procured for him a fellowship in psychology. Woodworth received a Ph.D. in psychology for his dissertationThe Accuracy of Voluntary Movement(1899).
Following receipt of his doctorate Woodworth accepted a one year instructorship in physiology at Columbia, 1901-02. His friend and fellow student from Harvard, E.L. Thorndike had also moved to Columbia and they collaborated on a series of articles regarding thetransfer of training(Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901Woodworth then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Liverpool in 1902 (thereby allowing him to do physiological work underCharles Scott Sherrington).
With the assistance of Cattell (then head of the department), Woodworth landed a full-time instructorship in psychology at Columbia in 1903 and returned to the U.S. with a wife (Gabrielle Schjoth) whom he had married in England (Zusne, 1975, p. 278).
St. Louis World's Fair, 1904(see Richards, 1997). Woodworth's own autobiographical account (1930) describes his activities at the Fair as follows:
Cattell's involvement in promoting the new mental testing subdiscipline, as well as his distaste for administrative responsibilities, led him to delegate to Woodworth the task of overseeing the collection of anthropometric and psychometric data at the