Eleanor Maccoby

Eleanor Emmons Maccoby (1917 to 2018) was an American psychologist who became one of the leading figures in the study of gender and child development. Her research covered sex differences, gender development, parent and child relations and social development seen from the child's side. She trained at the University of Michigan, finishing her doctorate in 1950 after running her dissertation experiment with pigeons in B. F. Skinner's Harvard laboratory, and she taught at Harvard and then for decades at Stanford, where she also chaired the psychology department. Her best known book is The Development of Sex Differences (1966), and Patterns of Child-Rearing (1957) came from a large study she helped run at Harvard. In 2000 she became the first recipient of an award named in her honor.