Familypedia
Familypedia
Advertisement

  • American psychologist and educator
  • 1921-1939: 16th President of Yale University

Pres James R. Angell was born 8 May 1869 in Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont, United States to James Burrill Angell (1829-1916) and Sarah Swope Caswell (1831-1903) and died 4 March 1949 Hamden, New Haven County, Connecticut, United States of unspecified causes. He married Marion Isabel Watrous (1870-1931) 18 December 1894 in Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa, United States. He married Katharine Stuart Cramer (1890-1983) 2 August 1932 in Maine, United States.

James Rowland Angell was an American psychologist and educator who served as the 16th President of Yale University between 1921 and 1937. His father, James Burrill Angell (1829–1916), was president of the University of Vermont from 1866 to 1871 and then the University of Michigan from 1871 to 1909.

Biography

Early life and education

Angell was born on May 8, 1869, in Burlington, Vermont. He was born into one of the stellar academic families in American history. A sixth-generation descendant of Thomas Angell who settled Providence, Rhode Island, James's father, James Burrill Angell, was the president of the University of Vermont and thence president of the University of Michigan. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother and sister. When Angell was two years old, his family moved to Ann Arbor so that his father could take up the presidency of the University of Michigan. His maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell, was a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Brown University, later becoming its president. He was also a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences. His brother Alexis C. Angell became a professor of law of Michigan, and later a federal judge. His sister's husband, Andrew C. McLaughlin, was head of the history department at Michigan. His cousin, Frank Angell, founded psychology laboratories at Cornell and Stanford Universities.

Angell graduated from the University of Michigan with his bachelor's degree in 1890. He worked closely with John Dewey, earning a master's degree under his supervision in 1891. At Michigan he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Omicron chapter). He then went to Harvard University where he received a second master's degree in 1892 in psychology. He studied for a doctorate in philosophy in Berlin and Halle. His dissertation on the treatment of freedom in Kant was accepted, but required stylistic changes, which he never completed.[1] Instead, he decided to take up a post at the University of Minnesota He did, however, receive 23 honorary degrees during his lifetime.[2]

Academic career

James Rowland Angell cph

Portrait of Angell

In 1895, Angell was offered a position at the University of Chicago by John Dewey, who had moved from Michigan the year before. Almost immediately, he co-authored an article with his Chicago colleague Addison W. Moore[3] that simultaneously settled a nasty dispute between Cornell psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener and Princeton psychologist James Mark Baldwin as well as laying the foundations for the school of Functionalism. Later, while still at Chicago, Angell published the textbook Psychology; An Introductory Study of the Structure and Functions of Human Consciousness in 1904,[4] which became the major statement of the functionalist approach to psychology. Angell noted that the goal of psychology was to study how the mind helps the organism adjust to the environment and functionalism was a method in which to study consciousness and how it improves the organism relationship with the environment.[2] In 1905 (the year after Dewey left Chicago for Columbia University), Angell became the head of the newly created psychology department at Chicago. During this time he served as the 15th and youngest president of the American Psychological Association. He also supervised the young John B. Watson, who would later go on to found the behaviorist school of psychology. In 1908, Angell was raised to the level of Dean at Chicago, leaving the psychology department to another of his former students, Harvey Carr. During the last year of World War I Angell worked for the military under the supervision of Northwestern University psychologist Walter Dill Scott. The following year (1918), he returned to Chicago to serve as Acting President. The school would not make him president on a permanent basis, however, because he was not Baptist. In 1919 he left Chicago to head the National Research Council. In 1920, he headed the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Yale presidency

In 1921, Angell was appointed President of Yale University, the first non-Yale graduate to hold the position since the early 18th century. That same year, he was elected as an honorary member of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati. At Yale, he oversaw a major expansion of Yale's physical campus, including the completion of the residential college system and Sterling Memorial Library. He remained president of the university until his retirement in 1937, at which point he became educational counselor of the National Broadcasting Company. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932.[5] As president of Yale, Angell was a proponent of eugenics.[6]

Angell died on March 4, 1949, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Marriages

In 1894, James married Marion Isabel Watrous from Des Moines, Iowa, a fellow graduate of the University of Michigan. He had two children with her, one boy and one girl, but then she died in 1931. He subsequently married Katharine Cramer Woodman in 1932,[7] who brought great joy to his life because of the interest she took in his students and problems. Katharine Angell founded the New Haven Restaurant Institute, later known as the Culinary Institute of America.[8][9]



Children


Offspring of Pres James R. Angell and Marion Isabel Watrous (1870-1931)
Name Birth Death Joined with
Baby Girl Angell (1892-1892)
James Waterhouse Angell (1898-1986)
Marion Watrous Caswell Angell (1903-1978)



Siblings


Offspring of James Burrill Angell (1829-1916) and Sarah Swope Caswell (1831-1903)
Name Birth Death Joined with
Alexis Caswell Angell (1857-1932) 26 April 1857 Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island, United States 24 December 1932 Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, United States Francis Cary Cooley (1857-1934)
Baby Boy Angell (1860-1860)
Lois Thompson Angell (1863-1941) 15 February 1863 Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island, United States 5 May 1941 Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, United States Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin (1861-1947)
James Rowland Angell (1869-1949) 8 May 1869 Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont, United States 4 March 1949 Hamden, New Haven County, Connecticut, United States Marion Isabel Watrous (1870-1931)
Katharine Stuart Cramer (1890-1983)

Residences

See Also

External Links

Published books and articles

  • Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness'
  • Chapters from Modern Psychology
  • "The Influence of Darwin on Psychology" (part of a larger collection, Darwinism: Critical Reviews from Dublin Review, Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review)
  • "The Evolution of Intelligence" (part of a larger collection, The Evolution of Man: A Series of Lectures Delivered before the Yale Chapter of the Sigma Xi during the Academic Year 1921-1922)

References

  • Angell, J. R. (1936). James Rowland Angell. In Carl Murchison (Ed.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 3, pp. 1–38). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Angell/Angell_1961.html
  • Arnold, F. (1907) Untitled [Review of the article: The Province of Functional Psychology]. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 4, 276-277.
  • Dewsbury, D. (2003). James Rowland Angell, Born Administrator. In G. A. Kimble & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology (vol. 5). APA & LE
  • Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
  • Kelley, Brooks Mather. (1999). Yale: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07843-5; OCLC 810552
  • Kneessi, D. F. (2002). Datelines: james rowland angell. Retrieved from http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/datelines_jamesangell.html Archived 2016-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
  • Thilly, F. (1905) Untitled. [Review of the book: Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness]. The Philosophical Review, 14, 481-487.

Presidential Succession Chart

Educational offices
Preceded by
Mary Whiton Calkins
15th President of the American Psychological Association
1906–1907
Succeeded by
Henry Rutgers Marshall
Academic offices
Preceded by
Arthur Twining Hadley
President of Yale University
1921–1937
Succeeded by
Charles Seymour


Notes

  1. ^ Dewsbury, D. (2003). James Rowland Angell, Born Administrator. In G. A. Kimble & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology (vol. 5). APA & LEA
  2. ^ a b Kneessi, D. F. (2002). Datelines: James Rowland Angell. Retrieved from http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/datelines_jamesangell.html Archived 2016-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Angell, J. R. & Moore, A W. (1896). Studies from the psychological laboratory of the University of Chicago: 1. Reaction-Time: A study in attention and habit. Psychological Review, 3, 245-258. http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Angell/Angell_Moore_1896.html
  4. ^ "James Rowland Angell: Psychology: Preface and Table of Contents". http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Angell/Angell_1906/Angell_1906_00.html. 
  5. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf. 
  6. ^ (May–Jun 2012) "God and white men at Yale" (in en-US). Yale Alumni Magazine LXXV (5). 
  7. ^ Kimble, Gregory A.; Wertheimer, Michael (2003) (in en). Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. Psychology Press. pp. 1942. ISBN 9781135705336. https://books.google.com/books?id=w7LwgIKuSMkC&pg=PT141. 
  8. ^ Schiff, Judith (Jan–Feb 2008). "Angell of the CIA". Yale Alumni Magazine. 
  9. ^ "Katharine Angell Dies; Led Culinary Institute". New York Times. 26 July 1983. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/26/obituaries/katharine-angell-dies-led-culinary-institute.html. 



Footnotes (including sources)

MainTour

Advertisement