NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
UNDERWOOD 1915–1994
BENTON J. A Biographical Memoir byGEOFFREY KEPPEL
Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences.THE NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS Biographical Memoirs,VOLUME 79 PUBLISHED 2001BY
WASHINGTON, D.C. BENTON J. UNDERWOOD
February 28, 1915-November 29, 1994
BY GEOFFREY KEPPELBBENTON J. UNDERWOOD was one of the pre-eminent leaders in the post-World War II development of research on the acquisition and retention of verbal materials, frequently referred to at the time as the study of verbal learning and memory. Underwood is recognized for his extensive contributions to the experimental and theoretical analysis of this field and for a career as an innovator and a pacesetter in a rapidly growing and changing domain of research. Between 1941 and 1982, he amassed nearly 200 publications, including 10 books and 5 research monographs. Approximately 85 percent of his articles and monographs consisted of reports of experiments. His most ambitious research effort was his study of massed and distributed practice, which spanned over 17 years and included 26 empirical reports and theoretical articles. Underwood was born on February 28, 1915, in Center Point, Iowa. He received his primary and secondary education in Albion, a small town serving the farming community in central Iowa, where his father owned and operated the local lumberyard. His mother was particularly supportive of her children’s education, providing each with the opportunity to take special music lessons and expressing great admiration for a new idea, a well-written theme, or a good set of grades. She was particularly proud when Underwood published a short piece in the local paper on the history of Albion.
Upon graduating from high school in 1932, Underwood hoped to become a high-school athletic coach—a position viewed locally, in Underwood’s words, “as being little short of aristocratic.” With the help of a scholarship, personal loans, and room-and-board jobs, Underwood attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and graduated in 1936 with majors in education and psychology. After graduation, he found a temporary teaching job in the high school in Clarion, Iowa, and then, a year later, realized his long-term dream by serving for two years as a junior college athletic coach and a part-time academic teacher in Tipton, Iowa. He decided to further his education when he realized that “it was of much greater interest and challenge to teach an academic subject to reluctant minds than to try to teach a pivot shot to would-be athletes lacking in basic coordination.” With his new bride, Louise Olson Underwood, the couple headed west, where he planned to enroll in the summer session of 1939 at the University of Oregon. Underwood was experiencing difficulty in choosing between graduate work in education or in psychology, which was resolved when he took a psychology course offered by John Dashiell, who was a visiting professor from the University of North Carolina. After a few weeks in this course, Underwood made the decision to dedicate himself to a career in psychology.
Late that summer, Underwood accepted a position as a research assistant to Arthur W. Melton, chairman of the Psychology Department at the University of Missouri. Under Melton’s guidance, Underwood discovered the importance of applying experimental techniques to understand behavior