B.F. Skinner

American psychologist who believed human behavior could be engineered to build a better world, one of the most influential and controversial psychologists of the 20th Century. He was adored as a messiah and abhorred as a menace. A Harvard psychology professor, he made behavioral modification studies with rats and pigeons, applying the observation methods to working with the modification of human response. His only novel "Walden Two" didn't do well after it's release in 1948 but during the 60's it had a cult-like following, selling millions. Skinner's principle of "operant behavior" holds that even seemingly spontaneous action is a response to rewards and punishment. People do not shape the world, the world shapes them. He died of leukemia at age 86 in Cambridge, MA.

Born Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Fred to his friends, he was the oldest son of Grace, an amateur musician, and William, a lawyer. His boyhood was warm and stable, with no punishment ever by his father and only once by his mother who, when he used a bad word, washed his mouth out with soap. As a boy he was intrigued by mechanics and gadgets and built everything from steerable sleds and rafts to a stem cannon. During high school he held a variety of jobs from collecting telephone bills and selling shoes to playing saxophone in a jazz band. He wrote for the local newspaper, composing a few ads and reminiscences of the town and occasionally covered a meeting or concert..

Skinner majored in English at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and decided he wanted to be a writer. He sent some short stories to the poet Robert Frost, who wrote back; "You are worth twice anyone else I have seen in prose this year." Skinner went to Manhattan's Greenwich Village to work on his craft, but after a year, found that he had nothing to say. He went on to graduate study in psychology after being attracted to the work of John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism.