John Wallace Baird
John Wallace Baird (
Early life
John W. Baird was born in Motherwell, Ontario, a farming town about 50 km. north of the city of London, Ontario. He was the eighth of twelve children. His oldest brother, Andrew Browning Baird (1855–1940) became a prominent Presbyterian minister in western Canada, serving as Moderator of the church in 1916, and was involved in the creation of the United Church of Canada in the 1925.
John Baird suffered from chronic health conditions from early in life and, so, did not complete his secondary schooling until the age of 19. Only five years later did he travel to the
Graduate training
After spending an additional year in Toronto working in Kirschmann's laboratory, Baird traveled to Europe for graduate study. He spent several months each at the
Academic career
Baird worked as an instructor in psychology at
In 1909, Baird was called to direct the storied psychology laboratory at
In 1914, Baird married Barbara Morrison Sparks, the daughter of a physician in St. Marys, Ontario. In 1916 Baird was elected to membership in the venerable American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The duties of being laboratory director prevented Baird from conducting much original research during this period, but he was able to co-edit and contribute a chapter on perfect pitch to a Festschrift celebrating Titchener's 25th year at Cornell (Baird, 1917a). He also contributed a chapter (Baird, 1917b) to another Festschrift in honor of the retirement of Cornell philosophy professor James Edwin Creighton, who had been the founding president of the American Philosophical Association (and was a fellow Canadian). Also in 1917, Hall, Baird, and another Clark professor named Ludwig R. Geissler collectively founded a new periodical, the Journal of Applied Psychology. Baird published an article based on research he had conducted into the optimal type-font to be used in telephone books in the first volume (Baird, 1917c).
Around 1917 Baird became aware that Hall was grooming him to succeed both Hall and Sanford as president of a newly unified Clark College and Clark University upon their joint retirement in 1920.
Illness and death
In November 1918, Baird became seriously ill and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital in nearby
Selected publications
- Baird, J. W. (1903). The influence of accommodation and convergence on the perception of depth. American Journal of Psychology, 14, 150–200.
- Baird, J. W. (1905). The color sensitivity of the peripheral retina. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution.
- Baird, J. W. (1906). The contraction of the color zones in hysteria and in neurasthenia. Psychological Bulletin, 3, 249–254.
- Baird, J. W. (1908). The problems of color-blindness. Psychological Bulletin , 5 (9), 294–300.
- Baird, J. W. (1917a). Memory for absolute pitch. In W. B. Pillsbury, & J. W. Baird, Studies in Psychology: Titchener Commemorative Volume (pp. 43–78). Worcester, MA: Wilson.
- Baird, J. W. (1917b). The role of intent in mental functioning. In G. H. Sabine (Ed.), Philosophical essays in honor of James Edwin Creighton (pp. 307–317). New York: Macmillan.
- Baird, J. W. (1917c). The legibility of a telephone directory. Journal of Applied Psychology , 1 (1), 30–37.
- Baird, J. W. & Richardson, R. J. (1900). A case of abnormal colour sense, examined with special reference to the space threshold of colours. University of Toronto Studies, Psychological Series, 1, 86–96.
- Meumann, E. (1913). The psychology of learning: An experimental investigation of the economy and technique of memory (J. W. Baird, trans.). New York, NY: Appleton & Company.
References
- JSTOR 1642877
- Hugo Münsteberg (1898) was the first non-American APA president. He was born, raised, and educated in Germany. George Stuart Fullerton (1896) was born in India, but was American. Joseph Jastrow was born in Poland, but immigrated to the US at the age of 3. Charles Hubbard Judd (1909) was born in India to American parents who returned with him to the US at the age of 6. Carl Seashore(1911) was born in Sweden, but lived in the US from the age of 3. See his National Academy of Sciences memoir at [www.nap.edu/html/biomems/cseashore.pdf].
- ^ Koelsch, W. A. (1987). Clark University, 1887-1987: A narrative history. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.