Basic Biography
Helen Bradford Thompson was born November 6, 1874, in Englewood, Illinois, to Isabella Perkins Faxon Thompson and David Wallace Thompson. Her parents strongly supported education for women, and all three of their daughters went on to earn college degrees. Helen Thompson graduated first in her class from Englewood High School in 1893 and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Chicago. She received her Bachelor’s degree in 1897 and continued working toward a graduate degree in psychology with James R. Angell, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. Thompson completed her Ph.D. in 1900. Her thesis was titled “Psychological Norms in Men and Women”; in it, Thompson compared the performance of 25 men and 25 women on various sensory and intellectual tasks. She found that sex differences seemed to be largely due to differences in social influences throughout development (Milar 2004).
After completing her degree, Thompson was awarded a European fellowship and studied in...
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References
Burns, S. T. (2009). Legacy of the vocational bureau of Cincinnati: Research advances social justice. The Career Development Quarterly, 57(3), 237–247.
Milar, K. S. (2004). Breaking the silence: Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley. In T. C. Dalton, R. B. Evans, T. C. Dalton, & R. B. Evans (Eds.), The life cycle of psychological ideas: understanding prominence and the dynamics of intellectual change (pp. 301–328). New York: Kluwer.
Ogilvie, M., & Harvey, J. (2000). The biographical dictionary of women in science: pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-20th century. New York: Routledge.
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Rowden, A.S., Mitchell, A.D. (2012). Woolley, Helen Bradford. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_168
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