Raymond B. Cattell
William Revelle
Northwestern University
Raymond Cattell (1905-1998) was one of the most prolific scholars in the fields of personality,
intelligence and psychometrics in the twentieth century. His more than 43 books and 500
articles made major contributions to theories of personality and ability and methodological
techniques in psychometrics remain among the most cited of all psychologists.
Raymond Bernard Cattell (born: Hilltop, West
Bromich, England, March 20, 1905; died Honolulu,
Hawaii, February 2, 1998) was one of the most pro-
lific and important psychologists of the twentieth
century. With more than 43 books and 500 articles
he seemingly could write faster than some could
read. His contributions to theories of personality, in-
telligence and psychometrics were and remain very
influential to this day. He and Hans Eysenck were
the two major contributors to the scientific study
of personality in the mid to late twentieth century.
The distinctions he drew between crystallized and
fluid intelligence, between state and trait personal-
ity, as well as a multitude of psychometric innova-
tions have become embedded in the psychological
armamentarium perhaps without recognition.
Catttell started his career as an undergraduate
student in chemistry at Kings College, London at
age 16. Although achieving a first in chemistry at
age 19, having heard lectures by Cyril Burt and
Charles Spearman, and perhaps influenced by the
horrors of the first world war, the young Cattell
decided to pursue graduate training in psychology.
His graduate advisor was Charles Spearman, the
great psychometrician and intelligence theorist, but
he was also influenced by the geneticist and statis-
contact: William Revelle revelle@northwestern.edu
Version of March 1, 2014
To appear in Cautin, R. and Lilienfeld, S (Eds) The Ency-
clopedia of Clinical Psychology. Wiley-Blackwell
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tician, R.A. Fisher, as well as the psychometrician
and educational theorist, Cyril Burt. From Spear-
man he learned about factor analysis and the study
of intelligence, from Fisher, the analysis of variance
and experimental design, from Burt, the social and
political implications of the study of individual dif-
ferences. He received his Ph.D. in 1929 from Kings
Collge. His career reflected the influence of these
three mentors, all of whom were gifted mathemati-
cally, for Cattell combined all three approaches and
tried to apply a mathematical approach to the study
of personality.
Receiving a Ph.D. in the start of the depression,
Cattell was a lecturer in psychology at the Univer-
sity of Exeter and then spent five years doing educa-
tional and clinical psychology in the child guidance
clinic in Leicester before being offered (1937) a one
year post-doctoral position with E.L. Thorndike at
Columbia. He then spent three years at Clark Uni-
versity where he was the G. Stanley Hall Professor
of Genetic (developmental) Psychology before be-
coming a lecturer at Harvard from 1941-1945. With
great relief that he no longer had to teach under-
graduates, he became a Research Professor of Psy-
chology at the University of Illinois in 1945 where
he stayed until retiring in 1973. He then continued
to work in Boulder, Colorado before moving to the
University of Hawaii in 1978. He worked there until
his death in 1998.
For Cattell, the study of personality was the prob-
lem of finding the dimensions of the “personality
sphere” (Description and measurement of person-
ality, 1946). He did this, not from simple, uni-
variate research, but rather as the result of multidi-
mensional (e.g. factor or component) analyses of
the various dimensions of the data box. He em-
