Death of an Editor

For a half century no U.S. scientist has been officially dead until the patriarchal weekly Science published his obituary.

This week Science published the first obit that had not been carefully edited and put to press by Editor James McKeen Cattell.

As it must to all scientists, a Science obit had come to Dr. Cattell, 83.

In his own right as a scientist, Dr. Cattell rated much more than perfunctory notice. To him the U.S. owed not only much of its information about scientists, but also much of its passion for psychological tests. With William James, Cattell pioneered the U.S. study of psychology.

Son of the president of Lafayette College, he studied there and at German universities, became the first U.S. professor of psychology, at the University of Pennsylvania. There and at Columbia he trained many leading modern psychologists (including Edward Lee Thorndike) and originated psychological tests to measure individual human differences.

But Dr. Cattell was most active as an organizer and journalist. He founded the American Psychological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the Psychological Corp. (tests and polls), at one time or other headed many other professional scientific groups, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Science Made Journalistic. Cattell took over the struggling weekly Science (founded by Alexander Graham Bell) in 1895, made it pay by encouraging scientists to hold their disputes in his columns and by faithfully recording their comings & goings, promotions, deaths, bequests, other personal milestones.

Bald, grey-fringed, vigorous Dr. Cattell was a pacifist whose opponents always knew they had been in a fight. In 1917, after Columbia University's Nicholas ("Miraculous") Murray Butler had solemnly warned his facultymen against "seditious" behavior, Cattell promptly wrote Congress urging it not to send unwilling draftees to Europe. Butler fired him. Cattell fought back so fiercely that his house in Garrison-on-Hudson was nicknamed Fort Defiance. Cattell's good friend, Historian Charles Beard, quit the University. Cattell sued Columbia for $125,000, finally forced it to settle for $45,000.

Cattell challenged senility with a passionate interest in chess and tennis, which he played until he was nearly 70. He was fond of telling audiences that anyone can make himself happy by the proper application of psychology. His own prescription: "Work hard and long, live frugally, avoid waste, improve your business methods, pay your debts, accept charity only as a last resort."

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