James McKeen Cattell - Academic Career

Academic Career

After completing his Ph.D. with Wundt in Germany in 1886, Cattell took up a lecturing post at the University of Cambridge in England, and became a 'Fellow Commoner' of St John's College, Cambridge. He made occasional visits to America where he gave lectures at Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1889 he returned to the United States to take up the post of Professor of Psychology in Pennsylvania, and in 1891 moved to Columbia University where he became Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy; He became President of the American Psychological Association in 1895.

From the beginning of his career, Cattell worked hard to establish psychology as a field as worthy of study as any of the "hard" physical sciences, such as chemistry or physics. Indeed, he believed that further investigation would reveal that the intellect itself could be parsed into standard units of measurements. He also brought the methods of Wilhelm Wundt and Francis Galton back to the United States, establishing the mental testing efforts in the U.S.

In 1917, Cattell and English professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (grandson of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Richard Henry Dana, Jr.) were fired from Columbia University for opposing the United States’ conscription policy during World War I. Years later he sued the university and won an annuity. In 1921, he used the money that he had gained from the settlement in order to start The Psychological Corporation to foster his interest in the field of applied psychology. Because he was never able to really explain how psychologists can apply their work, the organization failed until taken over by other psychologists who had experience in applied psychology. Towards the end of his life, Cattell still edited and published his journals. To help himself in the process, he created the Science Press Printing Company in order to produce his journals. He continued his work on the journals until his death in 1944 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.