The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group at Queen Mary University of London, supported by the Wellcome Trust, has just made available online some of its material through the Medical Heritage Library. Among the items that can now be accessed online that may be of interest to AHP readers are a series of neuroscience history videos of oral history interviews with prominent neuroscientists, as well as the transcript of the Witness Seminar on the MRC Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge (now the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit). The latter is one of a series of events where prominent figures and historians are invited to gather and discuss significant historical events and figures. The MRC Applied Psychology United Witness Seminar was held at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, on 12 June 2001. The full collection of items from the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group can be found online here.
Tag Archives: Applied Psychology
History of the Journal of Applied Psychology
The Fall 2009 issue of the American Journal of Psychology contains an article on early psychologist Ludwig Reinholf Geissler. In this article Roger K. Thomas, of the University of Georgia, argues that of the three founders of the Journal of Applied Psychology – G. Stanley Hall, John Wallace Baird, and Geissler – it was Geissler who was the driving force behind the publication in the initial years of the journal. Thomas’s article is entitled, “Ludwig Reinhold Geissler and the Founding of the Journal of Applied Psychology“. The abstract reads:
A significant number of earlier (1929–1987) and more recent (1991–2009) history of psychology textbooks have reported on the 1917 founding of the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP). Although only G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) was mentioned as the founder, the JAP had three financial founders: Hall, John Wallace Baird (1869–1919), and Ludwig Reinhold Geissler (1879–1932). They also served as co-editors for Volumes 1 and 2, and Hall and Geissler continued as co-editors for Volumes 3 and 4. Geissler’s contributions to Volumes 1–4 far exceeded Hall’s and Baird’s. In unpublished autobiographical notes written in 1920, Geissler described himself as having “founded” and “established” the JAP with Hall’s and Baird’s aid; the evidence is consistent with that claim.