Minds and hearts: themes in the life of Gleb von Anrep

Creators of the Vocabulary of Anglophone Psychology and Their Relationships

The vocabulary of anglophone psychology largely developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The creators of this vocabulary include such well-known names as William James, Joan Riviere, E. L. Thorndike, and James Strachey. Along with others, they invented many new words and word meanings for psychology. The more a psychologist responded to the need for new vocabulary the more likely were they to be mentioned in publications. Moreover, linguistically creative psychologists occurred together in publications to a greater extent than less linguistically creative psychologists, with William James having the most co-occurrences. A network is presented that links each member of a sample of 59 linguistically creative psychologists to the other member of the sample with whom they most frequently co-occur (e.g., E. L. Thorndike co-occurs most frequently with William James). For each pair, we provide brief descriptions of their similarities and/or differences. There is also a cluster of translators who created new English words and word meanings in order to capture the meanings of words in other languages that had no satisfactory equivalents in English. Generally speaking, the more success psychologists have had in filling the lacunae in psychology’s vocabulary, the more they have been recognized by others.

Recollections of Professor Henry Barcroft, F.R.S

Professor Henry Barcroft, MD, FRS, Emeritus Professor of Physiology in St. Thomas' Hospital Medical School in London died on 11 January 1998, aged 93. He was born in Cambridge on 18 October 1904 where his father, Joseph Barcroft, a famous physiologist, worked with Foster and Langley and subsequently was appointed to the Chair of Physiology. Henry Barcroft followed in his father's footsteps. During his career as Professor of Physiology firstly at The Queen's University of Belfast and subsequently at St. Thomas's Hospital London, he made significant studies on the nervous and humoral control of human blood vessels. His success as a research scientist stemmed partly from his ability to simplify complex phenomena in a way that permitted them to be broken into component parts and tested and partly from his technical ingenuity that permitted simple, inexpensive measurements of difficult physiological variables. Perhaps the most important factor, however, was his ability to bring out and stimulate aptitudes and enthusiasms in others. Completely unselfish himself, he gave individuals every opportunity to develop their talents, and so make themselves known to a wide circle of interested medical scientists. In many ways, his life was a guidebook for young scientists on how to make the most of their opportunities.