James Rowland Angell

James Rowland Angell (1869 to 1949) was an American psychologist and educator who served as the 16th President of Yale University from 1921 to 1937. Born in Burlington, Vermont, into a prominent academic family, he studied at the University of Michigan, where he worked with John Dewey, and then at Harvard. At the University of Chicago he helped lay the foundations of the school of Functionalism, and his 1904 textbook on the structure and functions of human consciousness became the major statement of the functionalist approach, which asked how the mind helps an organism adjust to its environment. He headed the Chicago psychology department, served as president of the American Psychological Association, and supervised the young John B. Watson. After Yale he became educational counselor of the National Broadcasting Company.