Richard Maurice "Mike" Elliott (November 3, 1887 - May 6, 1969) was an American psychologist who served as the departmental chair of the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

Psychology Department from 1919 until 1951.

Biography

Elliott was born in

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...

. He received his Bachelor's degree from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

and in 1910 went on to graduate school at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

where he was advised by Hugo Münsterberg and influenced by Robert Yerkes. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Elliott conducted mental testing under the command of Donald G. Paterson. Elliott arrived to chair the new University of Minnesota Psychology Department in 1919. Elliott was credited with building the Minnesota psychology department into a world-class institution, recruiting eminent psychologists including

Karl Lashley Karl Spencer Lashley (June 7, 1890 – August 7, 1958) was a psychologist and behaviorist remembered for his contributions to the study of learning and memory. A ''Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Lashley as the 61 ...

B. F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and Social philosophy, social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his ret ...

, Starke R. Hathaway,

Paul Meehl Paul Everett Meehl (3 January 1920 – 14 February 2003) was an American clinical psychologist, Hathaway and Regents' Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, and past president of the American Psychological Association. A ''Review ...

, and Donald G. Paterson during his 32-year term as chair of the department.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Elliott, Richard M. 1887 births 1969 deaths 20th-century American psychologists Harvard University alumni University of Minnesota faculty Dartmouth College alumni