C
CATTELL, JAMES (1860–1944)
Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1860, J. McK-
een Cattell was the fourth president of the American
Psychological Association (1896) and the first psy-
chologist elected as a member of the National Acade-
my of Sciences in 1901. He was the founder of the
related areas of differential psychology and psycho-
metrics.
Cattell was the son of the president of Lafayette
College in Easton, Pennsylvania. As a young man he
was educated at home, and then in the college class-
room by the faculty members of that university, even-
tually receiving his undergraduate degree in 1880. In
1881 he traveled to Germany to pursue a degree in
philosophy with Rudolph Lotze. Lotze died shortly
after Cattell’s arrival so he completed the year with
Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Cattell returned to the
United States for a year at Johns Hopkins University,
then continued with his work in Wundt’s laboratory,
receiving his Ph.D. with Wundt in 1886. Cattell then
traveled to Cambridge University in England to pur-
sue a degree in medicine (a pursuit which he shortly
abandoned). While studying in England, he became
acquainted with Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles
Darwin. Galton was gathering anthropometric data
(measurements of the human body) in an attempt to
verify Darwin’s evolutionary propositions. Since Cat-
tell was known for his methods of measuring ‘‘psycho-
logical’’ attributes, Galton felt that such measures
would be a valuable addition to his arsenal of human
attributes and persuaded Cattell to develop some psy-
chological ‘‘tests.’’ These tests included most of the
standard assessments of Wundt’s lab, including reac-
tion time and various sensory tasks. Early in his de-
velopment, Cattell became fascinated with the differ-
ences between and among individuals in psychologi-
cal traits, including intelligence. He devoted his life
to measuring those differences. It is fair to say that
Cattell founded the fields of differential psychology
and psychometrics.
Cattell returned to the United States in 1889 and
took a position with the University of Pennsylvania as
its first professor of psychology, moving to a similar
position at Columbia University in 1891. At Columbia
he began a program of testing directed toward more
effective placement of incoming students into curric-
ula. He was convinced that by measuring various
mental and physical attributes of these students, an
analysis might be done that would reveal the nature
and structure of intelligence. In 1892 he joined with
other prominent philosopher/psychologists (e.g., Wil-
liam James, Hugo Munsterberg, and G. Stanley Hall)
to found the American Psychological Association, be-
coming its fourth president in 1896. He continued his
student-testing project at Columbia but when the re-
sults were finally analyzed, the disappointing conclu-
sion was that none of his ‘‘mental tests’’ showed any
relationship to measures of student success.
From a period beginning in 1900 until he left Co-
lumbia in 1917, he devoted most of his scientific ef-
forts to the ranking of scientists, including
psychologists, according to their judged ‘‘eminence’’
by their colleagues. While at Columbia he was a vocal73