Walter Richard Miles
| Walter Richard Miles | |
|---|---|
1947 at the AAAS
|
|
| Born |
March 29, 1885 Silverleaf, North Dakota |
| Died | May 15, 1978 (aged 93) Sandy Spring, Maryland |
| Education |
Pacific College University of Iowa |
| Spouse(s) | Catharine Cox Miles |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions |
Stanford University Yale University |
| Doctoral advisor | Carl Seashore |
| Doctoral students | Neil Miller |
Walter Richard Miles (March 29, 1885 – May 15, 1978) was an American psychologist and a president of the American Psychological Association (APA). He best known for his development of the two-story rat maze, his research on low dose alcohol, the development of red night vision goggles for aviation pilots, and the reduction of performance in aging individuals. However, the theme of his academic career was his fascination with apparatuses to measure behavior. C. James Goodwin (2003) noted that Miles "never became a leading figure in any particular area of research in psychology... but drifted from one area to another, with the direction of the drift determined often by the presence of a particular type of apparatus or an apparatus-related problem that intrigued him" (p. 58).
Born into a Quaker family on March 29, 1885 in Silverleaf, North Dakota. Richard Walter Miles was the son of Thomas Elwood Miles, a farmer and country store owner, and Sarah Caroline Miles. His grandfather, Richard White, was a prosperous farmer in Indiana, but lost everything in the depression of the late 1870s.
In 1901 Miles entered Pacific Academy about 35 miles away from home. During his one-year here, Miles worked for room and board in the president's house and played football. After graduation, he attended Pacific College in 1902 and graduated as valedictorian in 1906. From 1906–1908 he attended Earlham College in Indiana and began working in a small psychology laboratory. It was here he first became interested in laboratory apparatuses as he worked his way through one of Titchener's laboratory manuals in experimental psychology.
After graduating from Earlham, he moved home for the summer before accepting a teaching position in psychology and education at William Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He was offered $700 a year if married and $600 if not, so he married Elizabeth Mae Kirk and left the next day. While at Penn College, he was recruited by Carl Seashore to attend graduate school at Iowa. While at Iowa, he first earned a masters in education and earned money by tutoring and selling insurance, however by the second year Seashore had convinced him to pursue psychology. His dissertation focused on the accuracy of the voice in simple pitch singing and he completed his PhD in psychology in 1913.
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