The First Ph.D. in Psychology

The first Ph.D. ever awarded with the term “Psychology” in its title was granted at Harvard University in 1878.

Barely fourteen years later, the American Psychological Association was the center of this fledgling discipline, which was quite “undisciplined” since it was not driven by any precise methodological or scientific focus. One hundred years later, Pres. George Bush declared the 1990s “The Decade of the Brain.”

During the intervening decades, our understanding of the human brain mushroomed as our knowledge base catapulted from mere conjecture, guesswork, and speculation to a domain grounded in biology, medicine, and science.

Parenting and education were two areas of the modern human experience that seemed almost impervious to the incredible findings in neuroscience until recently. Remarkably, no two arenas are better positioned to put this research into daily practice. To our collective good fortune, today we see educators, parents and neuroscientists seeking to understand the aspects of behavior, learning and memory.