Jacob Robert Kantor

Jacob Robert Kantor (August 8, 1888 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – 1984 in Chicago, Illinois) was a prominent American psychologist who pioneered a naturalistic system in psychology called Interbehavioral Psychology or Interbehaviorism.

J. R. Kantor was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Julius Kantor, a German orthodox rabbi, and Mary, a Lithuanian, who immigrated to Pennsylvania some years before the birth of Kantor. Kantor had two brothers and four sisters. He entered the University of Chicago with an interest in chemistry, but then discovered his love for psychology. In 1914 Kantor earned a Ph.B. He earned his Ph.D. in 1917 and was an instructor at the University of Chicago from 1917 to 1920. Kantor married Helen Rich in 1916. Their only child was born in 1919, renowned archaeologist and professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Helene J. Kantor (d. 1993). Because Helene was born with a progressive muscular dystrophy, Kantor accepted a position as a professor at Indiana University where he would remain for 39 years. This period overlapped for a brief time with B. F. Skinner's tenure there, to their mutual benefit. Kantor was also one of the founders of the journal The Psychological Record in 1937.

Following the death of his wife in 1956, Kantor retired in 1959 but continued teaching as a visiting professor at New York University and then at the University of Maryland. He was appointed to the position of research associate at the University of Chicago in 1964, and worked there until the time of his death twenty years later.

Kantor was an active and passionate writer throughout all of his career and almost to the day of his death in 1984. He authored 20 books and over 120 papers. One of Kantor's biggest contributions to psychology was his development of naturalistic viewpoints in psychology. Kantor strove to create scientific method for studying psychology, much like the scientific methods for biology, chemistry and physics. Kantor used this method of objective psychology to research further in the areas of social psychology and behavioral psychology. He also published numerous writings on the philosophy of science.

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