B. F. Skinner

He married Yvonne Blue in 1936. The couple had two daughters, Julie and Deborah. His daughter Julie is an author and educator.

The B.F. Skinner Foundation was formed in 1988 with his support to promote the science founded by him. His daughter Julie is the president of the foundation.

He was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 and died of the disease in 1990.

Skinner was born in Pennsylvania to a lawyer father William and his wife Grace. He had a comfortable childhood and loved to invent things. He became an atheist at a young age.

He dreamed of becoming a writer and attended Hamilton College in New York with this goal in mind. However, he could not fit in at the college due to his intellectual attitude. He completed his B.A. in English literature in 1926.

He enrolled at Harvard University from where he received his M.A. in 1930.

He tried writing a novel after his graduation but was soon disillusioned with his literary skills. A chance encounter with John B. Watson’s ‘Behaviorism’ inspired him to shift his focus to the study of psychology.

He received his PhD from the Harvard University in 1931 and served as a researcher till 1936.

While he was at Harvard he began working on building the operant conditioning chamber. Also known as the Skinner box, it is an apparatus used to study operant conditioning and classical conditioning in animals.

After leaving Harvard in 1936 he became an Instructor at the University of Minnesota. He was made an Assistant Professor in 1937 and Associate Professor in 1939. He remained in this position till 1945.

He was appointed as a professor in Indiana University in 1945 and was also chosen as the Chairperson of the psychology department. He left after serving there for three years.

He returned to Harvard University as a tenured professor in 1948 and taught there for the rest of his life.

He invented the operant conditioning chamber which helps in studying behaviour conditioning in animals by teaching them to perform certain actions in response to a particular stimuli. These chambers are used in a number of research fields to study animal behaviour and psychology.

His school of psychology, radical behaviorism, is applied in several diverse fields in the contemporary society like management, clinical practice, animal training and education. His theories also help in formulating therapies for autistic children.