Beatrice Edgell
| Beatrice Edgell | |
|---|---|
Edgell in 1927
|
|
| Born |
26 October 1871 Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England |
| Died | 10 August 1947 (aged 75) Cheltenham, Gloucestershire |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Psychologist, professor |
| Employer | Bedford College (1898–1933) |
| Known for | First British woman psychology PhD (1901), first British woman professor of psychology (1927) |
Beatrice Edgell (26 October 1871 – 10 August 1948) was a British psychologist, researcher and university teacher. She taught at Bedford College in the University of London from 1897 to 1933. She was the first British woman to earn a PhD in psychology and the first British woman to be named a professor of psychology. She was also the first female president of the British Psychological Society, the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association and the Psychological Division of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Edgell was born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England in 1871, the youngest of six children of Edward Higginson Edgell and his wife, the former Sarah Ann Buckle. Edward Edgell was a bank manager in Tewkesbury. Beatrice Edgell's mother died when her youngest daughter was 11 years old.
She attended Tewkesbury High School for Girls between the ages of 10 to 14. In 1886 she went to Notting Hill High School for Girls, leaving in 1891 to enter University College Wales, Aberystwyth, where she studied mainly philosophy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Mental and Moral sciences from the University of London in 1894.
From 1894 to 1897 Edgell taught high school in Sunderland and Blackburn, earning a teaching diploma from the University of London in 1896. In 1897 she returned to study in Aberystwyth, where her alma mater had become part of the University of Wales. In 1898 she earned a BA in philosophy from the University of Wales, followed in 1899 by a Master of Arts degree from the same university.
Edgell spent the 1900–01 winter semester and the 1901 summer semester at the University of Würzburg, supported by a travelling research fellowship from the University of Wales. Under the supervision of Oswald Külpe, she wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled Die Grenzen des Experiments als einer psychologischen Methode, which was "a theoretical discussion of the limits of the experiment as a method in psychology". She defended her dissertation successfully on 30 July 1901, thereby becoming the first woman to earn a doctoral degree from the University of Würzburg and the first British woman to be awarded a PhD in psychology by any university.
...
Wikipedia