Chronology

1832: Wilhelm Wundt born in Neckarau, Baden, Germany, outside of Leipzig, on August 16.

1849: Ivan Pavlov born in the village of Ryazan, Russia.

1852: Napoleon III founded the Second Empire in France.

1856: Sigismund Freud is born (changes his name to Sigmund at age 22).

1857: Alfred Binet born on July 8 in Nice, France.

1857: Louis Pasteur introduces his germ theory of fermentation.

1857: Wilhelm Wundt begins a seven-year position as lecturer in physiology at Heidelberg. During this time he serves as an assistant Hermann von Helmholtz.

1859: Charles Darwin presents his theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species.

1861–65: The Civil War is fought in the United States.

1864: Wilhelm Wundt appointed associate professor in physiology at University of Heidelberg.

1870–71: Prussia defeats France in the Franco-Prussian War. The Third Republic is founded in France.

1873: Sigmund Freud receives a summa cum laude award on graduation from the Gymnasium. He is already able to read in several languages.

1873–74: Wilhelm Wundt publishes first edition of Principles of Psychology.

1875: Carl Jung born in a country parsonage at Kesswil in Canton Thurgau, Switzerland.

1875: Wilhelm Wundt appointed one of two fellow professors at Leipzig University, focusing on practical-scientific theories.

1876: Robert Yerkes born on May 26 in Breadysville, Pennsylvania.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.

1877: Sigmund Freud joins Brücke's laboratory.

1878: Alfred Binet receives a license in law, a career he chose not to pursue.

1879: Ivan Pavlov graduates from the Medical Academy; wins a gold medal in student competition.

1879: Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory for experimental psychology.

1880: Max Wertheimer born on April 15, 1880, in Prague.

1880: Alfred Binet publishes his first article, "On the Fusion of Similar Sensations."

1881: Sigmund Freud awarded a delayed doctor's degree in medicine.

1883–84: Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory receives official status at Leipzig as an institution of its department of philosophy.

1884: Francis Galton sets up a laboratory in London to measure individual differences in mental abilities.

1884: Sigmund Freud discovers the analgesic properties of cocaine.

1885: Karen Horney is born outside Hamburg, Germany.

1886: Alfred Binet publishes his first book, The Psychology of Reasoning.

1886: Sigmund Freud starts private practice.

1887: Sigmund Freud starts using hypnosis.

1890: Kurt Lewin born in Germany, now a part of Poland.

1890: James McKeen Cattell publishes a paper in which he coined the term "mental test."

1894: Alfred Binet receives a doctoral degree in natural science from the Sorbonne.

1895: Alfred Binet helps found the first French psychological journal.

1896: Sigmund Freud for the first time uses the term"psychoanalysis."

1896: Wilhelm Wundt dies in Groábothen, German, near Leipzig, August 31. His book, Outlines of Psychology, was published the same year.

1896: Alfred Binet publishes a paper outlining "individual psychology" with Victor Henri.

1896: Jean Piaget born in Neuchatel, Switzerland.

1897: Ivan Pavlov publishes "Lectures on the Work of the Main Digestive Glands."

1897: Sigmund Freud postulates Oedipus complex.

1898: Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the element radium.

1899: Alfred Binet began working with Théodore Simon.

1899: Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is published on November 4.

1900: After finishing medical school at the University of Basel, Carl Jung travels to Zurich to study psychiatry under Eugen Bleuler, a world-famous expert on schizophrenia.

1900: Gregor Mendel's basic laws of heredity, which went unnoticed when first set forth in the 1860s, are rediscovered.

1900–09: Carl Jung works as a psychiatric resident at the Burghölzli, a famous mental hospital in Zurich.

1900–20: Wilhelm Wundt's Volkerpsychologie (Folk Psychology) published in 10 volumes.

1901: Guglielmo Marconi sends the first long-wave radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean.

1902: Robert Yerkes receives a PhD in psychology from Harvard and begins teaching comparative psychology at Harvard.

1902: Sigmund Freud begins the Wednesday Psychological Society meetings at his home.

1902: Carl Rogers is born in Oak Park, Illinois.

1903: The Wright Brothers make the first successful airplane flight.

1904: Max Wertheimer receives his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Würzburg.

1904: Ivan Pavlov awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1904: B.F. Skinner born March 20.

1905: George Alexander Kelly born on a farm near Perth, Kansas.

1905: Alfred Binet, along with Theodore Simon, introduces the first version of the Binet-Simon Scale.

1905: Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity.

1906: Carl Jung publishes a book on schizophrenia that applies Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic approach to the study of psychosis.

1906: Carl Jung starts his correspondence with Sigmund Freud.

1906: Jean Piaget publishes first article in local journal.

1908: Anne Anastasi born on December 19 in New York City.

1908: Robert Yerkes publishes the Yerkes-Dodson law, developed with John Dodson, which related the strength of a stimulus to the speed of avoidance learning.

1908: Abraham Maslow born in Manhattan.

1909: Publication of Sigmund Freud's Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (Little Hans).

1909: Carl Jung travels with Sigmund Freud to the United States to give lectures at Clark University in Massachusetts.

1910: Max Wertheimer discovers the phi phenomenon on a train ride and published his ground-breaking paper "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement" two years later.

1910: Construction of Ivan Pavlov's "Towers of Silence" begins.

1911: Marie Curie wins her second Nobel Prize for her discovery and study of radium.

1911: Robert Yerkes founds the Journal of Animal Behavior, the first U.S. scientific journal devoted solely to animal behavior research.

1911: Alfred Binet makes the last revision of the Binet-Simon Scale. Dies on October 18.

1912: The ocean liner Titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg on her maiden voyage.

1913: Sigmund Freud publishes Totem and Taboo.

1913: Mary Salter (later Ainsworth) born in Glendale, Ohio.

1913: Carl Jung breaks with Sigmund Freud. Publishes Psychology of the Unconscious, the first account of his analytical psychology as an approach to therapy distinct from psychoanalysis.

1913–14: Carl Jung experiences a midlife crisis or period of psychological turmoil that resolves with the outbreak of World War I in July 1914.

1913–17: Robert Yerkes works half-time as a psychologist in the Psychopathic Department at Boston State Hospital.

1914: Kenneth Bancroft Clark born in Panama.

1914: Kurt Lewin volunteers to serve in World War I.

1914–18: World War I in Europe.

1915: Robert Yerkes introduces a point scale for measuring intelligence, developed with J. W. Bridges.

1916: Lewis Terman introduced the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, a U.S. version of the Binet-Simon Scale that modified it substantially.

1917: The October Revolution occurs. The Bolsheviks take power, and Vladimir Lenin becomes new Soviet leader. The United States enters World War I.

1917: Kurt Lewin wounded in war.

1917: Robert Yerkes elected president of the American Psychological Association. Becomes a member of the National Research Council.

1917–18: Robert Yerkes chairs a committee that developed the U.S. Army Alpha and Beta intelligence tests during World War I.

1918: Jean Piaget receives PhD in Natural Sciences, University of Neuchatel. He works in Eugen Bleuler's psychiatric clinic at the University of Zurich and develops his technique of the clinical interview.

1919: Kenneth Bancroft Clark comes to America with mother and sister.

1919: Prohibition begins in the United States.

1919–24: Robert Yerkes works for the National Research Council.

1920: Women win the right to vote in the United States.

1920: Sigmund Freud publishes Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

1920: Wilhelm Wundt publishes autobiography entitled Erlebtes und Erkanntes.

1921: Sigmund Freud publishes Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

1921: Aaron Temkin Beck born in Providence, Rhode Island.

1921: Carl Jung publishes Psychological Types, a major work that secures his reputation as an original thinker.

1921: Jean Piaget appointed research director of the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva, and publishes article in the Archives de Psychologie stating that logic is not innate but develops over time through interactive processes of self-regulation.

1923: Jean Piaget publishes The Language and Thought of the Child. Four more books follow, bringing him worldwide fame before the age of 30.

1923: Sigmund Freud diagnosed with cancer of the jaw. Publication of The Ego and the Id.

1924: The first Olympic Winter Games are played.

1924–44: Robert Yerkes holds a post as professor of psychobiology at Yale University.

1925: Jean Piaget begins the study of the intellectual development of his three children from infancy through their teenage years.

1925: Albert Bandura born on December 4, 1925, in Mundare, Alberta, Canada.

1925: Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf."

1926: Carl Brigham introduced the forerunner of the SAT.

1927: Lawrence Kohlberg born in Bronxville, New York.

1927: Ivan Pavlov publishes "Lectures on the Work of the Large Hemispheres of the Brain."

1928: Albert Einstein and Jean Piaget meet. Einstein suggests that Piaget study the origins in children of the notions of time and simultaneity.

1929: Stock market crash on Wall Street marks the beginning of the Great Depression.

1929: Robert Yerkes publishes The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life, coauthored with his wife, Ada Watterson Yerkes.

1929: Jean Piaget teaches the history of scientific thought at the University of Geneva until 1939. Begins 35-year tenure as director of the International Bureau of Education in Geneva.

1929–41: Robert Yerkes founds and directs the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology, the first laboratory for nonhuman primate research in the United States.

1930: Anne Anastasi awarded a PhD from Columbia University. Hired as instructor of psychology at Barnard College.

1930: B.F. Skinner initiates research in reflexes.

1931: George Alexander Kelly receives his PhD from the University of Iowa.

1931–34: Abraham Maslow conducts primate research with Harry Harlow. Completes a masters thesis and doctoral dissertation on primate behavior.

1932: Karen Horney moves to United States.

1933: Kurt Lewin moves to United States to escape the rise of Hitler.

1933: Sigmund Freud has a letter exchange with Albert Einstein on the topic Why the War? The Nazis publicly burn Freud's work in Berlin.

1933: Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany.

1934: Max Wertheimer arrives in New York and begins teaching at the "University in Exile" for the next 10 years.

1934: Kenneth Bancroft Clark earns his bachelor's degree from Howard University. Gains his master's the following year.

1934: Karen Horney takes teaching position at Washington-Baltimore Society for Psychoanalysis.

1935–37: Abraham Maslow completes postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Research on sexuality and dominance in humans.

1936: Ivan Pavlov dies on February 27 after developing pneumonia at the age of 86.

1936: Karen Horney publishes Feminine Psychology.

1936: Jean Piaget publishes The Origins of Intelligence in Children based on his observations of his three children.

1937: Carl Jung invited by Yale University to deliver the Terry Lectures on psychology and religion.

1937: Anne Anastasi publishes her first major work, Differential Psychology, through Macmillan Publishing, New York.

1937–51: Abraham Maslow obtains a faculty position at Brooklyn College. Eventually reaches rank of associate professor.

1937–61: Carl Jung continues to practice medicine in Küssnacht, a suburb of Zurich, until his death in 1961.

1938: March 13th: Austria is annexed by Germany. Sigmund Freud's house and the headquarters of the Vienna Association of Psychoanalysis are searched. Anna Freud is arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. In June, Freud and his family emigrate to Great Britain.

1938: B.F. Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms published.

1939: Mary Salter Ainsworth receives her PhD from the University of Toronto.

1939: Sigmund Freud dies. Moses and Monotheism is published.

1939: David Wechsler published the Wechsler Bellevue Scale, an adult-oriented intelligence test.

1939: Anne Anastasi appointed assistant professor of psychology and department chair, Queens College of the City University of New York.

1939–45: World War II in Europe.

1940: Jean Piaget appointed Chair of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva (until 1971).

1940: Carl Rogers receives a full professorship at Ohio State University.

1941: The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. The United States enters World War II.

1941–45: George Alexander Kelly serves during World War II as a Navy aviation psychologist, and teaches at the University of Maryland.

1942: B.F. Skinner awarded the Warren Medal by the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

1942: Jean Piaget lectures at the College of France during Nazi occupation. Lectures compiled into The Psychology of Intelligence published in 1963.

1942: Karen Horney publishes Self-Analysis.

1942: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth enters the Canadian Women's Army Corps.

1943: Max Wertheimer dies at his home after suffering a heart attack.

1944: Kurt Lewin invited to set up research institute at MIT.

1944: D-Day invasion occurs.

1945: United States drops the first atomic bombs. Liberation of the concentration camps in Europe.

1945: B.F. Skinner takes over the psychology department at the University of Indiana, where he developed the Teaching Machine and Aircrib.

1945: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth serves as Director of Women's Rehabilitation at Veteran Army Services Hospital.

1945: Carl Rogers joins faculty at the University of Chicago. Elected president of the American Psychological Association.

1945: Max Wertheimer publishes his only book, Productive Thinking.

1946: Aaron Temkin Beck graduates with a medical degree from Yale University.

1946: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth returns to University of Toronto to teach.

1946: George Alexander Kelly accepted the position as director of clinical programs for the school of psychology at the Ohio State University, following Carl Rogers.

1947: Kurt Lewin dies of heart attack.

1947: Anne Anastasi joins the faculty at Fordham University as associate professor, where she would be appointed to a full professorship in 1951.

1948: The state of Israel is founded and Gandhi is assassinated.

1948: B.F. Skinner's Walden Two published.

1949: NATO is established.

1949: David Wechsler introduced the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children.

1950: Kenneth Bancroft Clark publishes "Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development" for the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth.

1950: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth moves to London.

1950: Jean Piaget publishes his three volume book, Introduction a l'epistemologie genetique.

1951: Korean War breaks out. Aaron Temkin Beck takes a position at Valley Forge Field Hospital and treats soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

1951–69: Abraham Maslow obtains a faculty position at Brandeis University. Serves as department chair until 1961.

1952: Polio vaccine is developed.

1952: Albert Bandura receives a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa.

1952: Karen Horney dies of stomach cancer at age 67.

1953: Albert Bandura takes a job as a psychology instructor at Stanford University.

1953: DNA is discovered.

1954: The publication of Abraham Maslow's Motivation and Personality brings national prominence.

1954: Mary Salter Ainsworth moves to Africa; starts Uganda mother-infant studies.

1954: Brown v. Board of Education uses Kenneth Bancroft Clark's studies as a basis for school desegregation.

1954: Anne Anastasi publishes Psychological Testing, Macmillan, New York.

1954: Aaron Temkin Beck joins the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pennsylvania.

1955: Mary Salter Ainsworth hired as lecturer at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

1955: W. W. Norton & Company publishes George Alexander Kelly's groundbreaking, two-volume work, The Psychology of Personal Constructs.

1955: Jean Piaget's International Center for Genetic Epistemology opens at the University of Geneva.

1955: First edition of Kenneth Bancroft Clark's book Prejudice and Your Child published as Clark's first public scientific commentary.

1956: Fixed interval schedule of reinforcement described by B.F. Skinner.

1956: Robert Yerkes dies on February 3.

1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, its first satellite, into Earth's orbit.

1958: Angelo Roncalli elected Pope; he takes the name John XXIII.

1958: Lawrence Kohlberg graduates from University of Chicago with a doctoral degree.

1959: Fidel Castro expels the dictator Fulgencio Batista and becomes premier of Cuba.

1959: Albert Bandura publishes his first book, Adolescent Aggression, with Richard Walters.

1959: Kenneth Bancroft Clark elected president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

1961: The first issue of The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, founded by Abraham Maslow, is published.

1961: Kenneth Bancroft Clark awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP.

1961: The East German government builds the Berlin Wall. The Bay of Pigs Invasion occurs.

1962: Abraham Maslow publishes Toward a Psychology of Being.

1962: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth begins Baltimore replication study of mother-infant dyads.

1962–63: Abraham Maslow consults with Andy Kay at Non-Linear Systems.

1963: Albert Bandura publishes Social Learning and Personality Development, which summarized his research on observational learning and the Bobo doll experiments.

1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in a motorcade through Dallas.

1964: Carl Rogers elected "Humanist of the Year" by the American Humanist Association.

1964: Civil Rights Act passes in U.S. Congress.

1964: Albert Bandura becomes a full professor at Stanford.

1965: George Alexander Kelly begins research position at Brandeis University, where Abraham Maslow is also working at the time.

1965: Kenneth Bancroft Clark publishes Dark Ghetto.

1966: Abraham Maslow is elected president of the American Psychological Association.

1966: B.F. Skinner introduces the concept of critical period in reinforcing an event.

1966: Jean Piaget publishes The Psychology of the Child with Barbel Inhelder.

1967: Israelis fight the Six Days War.

1967: George Alexander Kelly dies on March 6.

1967: Mary Salter Ainsworth publishes Infancy in Uganda.

1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1968: Lawrence Kohlberg becomes a full professor at Harvard University. Later founds the Center for Moral Devlopment and Education there.

1968: B.F. Skinner identifies the critical characteristics of programmed instruction.

1968: Robert Kennedy is assassinated.

1969: Lawrence Kohlberg studies moral development in an Israeli kibbutz.

1969: Jean Piaget awarded distinguished Scientific Contribution Award by the American Psychological Association. He is the first European to receive the award.

1969: The first human beings set foot on the Moon.

1970: Protesting students at Kent State University are shot.

1970: Carl Rogers' On Encounter Groups published. He would publish two more books before his death.

1970: Abraham Maslow dies of a heart attack at his home in Menlo Park, California.

1971: Lawrence Kohlberg coauthors "The Adolescent as Philosopher" with Carol Gilligan. Kohlberg also contracts a parasitic illness in Central America, which afflicts him for 16 years.

1971: Kenneth Bancroft Clark elected president of the American Psychological Association. Clark has been the only African American to serve in that capacity.

1971: B.F. Skinner publishes Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

1972: B.F. Skinner receives the Humanist of the Year Award by the American Humanist Association.

1972: Terrorists attack and kill athletes at the Munich Olympic games.

1973: Abortion is legalized in the United States.

1974: Kenneth Bancroft Clark publishes Pathos of Power.

1974: Albert Bandura serves as president of the American Psychological Association.

1974: Aaron Temkin Beck publishes The Prediction of Suicide.

1975: Mary Salter Ainsworth leaves Johns Hopkins for University of Virginia.

1975–95: Kenneth Bancroft Clark serves on the New York Board of Regents.

1976: North and South Viet Nam re-join.

1977: Albert Bandura publishes Social Learning Theory, which aroused interest in social learning and modeling.

1978: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth publishes Patterns of Attachment.

1979: Anne Anastasi named professor emeritus at Fordham.

1979: The Iranians under Khomeini take Americans as hostages.

1980: Jean Piaget dies at the age of 84 in Geneva, Switzerland.

1981: Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

1983: B.F. Skinner publishes Enjoying Old Age.

1984: The virus that causes AIDS is identified by two groups of scientists in France and the United States.

1984: Mary Salter Ainsworth retires from the University of Virginia as Professor Emeritus.

1985: Robert Sternberg presents his three-part theory of intelligence in Beyond IQ.

1986: The Challenger Space Shuttle explodes, killing all on board.

1986: Albert Bandura publishes Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, which described his social-cognitive theory of human functioning.

1986: Carl Rogers travels to Russia to facilitate conflict resolution.

1987: Carl Rogers dies of heart attack.

1987: Lawrence Kohlberg commits suicide by drowning in Winthrop, Massachusetts.

1988: Aaron Temkin Beck publishes Love is Never Enough.

1990: B.F. Skinner dies on August 18.

1992: President George Bush of the United States and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia jointly declare an end to the Cold War.

1994: Kenneth Bancroft Clark receives the APA Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology.

1997: Albert Bandura publishes Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, which set forth his ideas about self-efficacy beliefs.

1998: Mary Salter Ainsworth receives APA Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology.

1999: Mary Salter Ainsworth dies in Charlottesville, Virginia.

2000: Yassir Arafat launches the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israel.

2001: Anne Anastasi dies on May 4.

2003: Space shuttle Columbia explodes on reentry, killing the seven astronauts on board.

2004: 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps-Clark awarded honorary degrees from Earlham College to mark their "historic contributions to the cause of equal rights for all Americans."

2004: Aaron Temkin Beck publishes Cognitive Therapy of Personal Disorders, second edition.