Edward Thorndike - Childhood and Education

Childhood and Education

Thorndike, born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, was the son of a Methodist minister in Lowell, Massachusetts.

On August 29, 1900, he wed Elizabeth Moulton and they had five children.

Thorndike graduated from The Roxbury Latin School (1891), in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Wesleyan University (B.S. 1895), Harvard University (M.A. 1897), and Columbia University (PhD. 1898).

While at Harvard, he was interested in how animals learn, and worked with William James. Afterwards, he became interested in the animal 'man', to the study of which he then devoted his life.

Edward's thesis is sometimes thought of as the essential document of modern comparative psychology.

Edward Thorndike became an American pioneer in Comparative Psychology. He was also a well-respected colleague at Columbia University, where he taught alongside fellow staff.

Upon graduation, Thorndike returned to his initial interest, Educational Psychology. In 1898 he completed his PhD at Columbia University under the supervision of James McKeen Cattell, one of the founding fathers of psychometrics. In 1899, after a year of unhappy, initial employment at the College for Women of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, he became an instructor in psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he remained for the rest of his career, studying human learning, education, and mental testing. In 1937 Thorndike became the second President of the Psychometric Society, following in the footsteps of Louis Leon Thurstone who had established the society and its journal Psychometrika the previous year.