Raymond Dodge

Raymond Dodge (1871 to 1942) was an American experimental psychologist best known for his studies of eye movements. Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, he took a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Williams College in 1893 and, after Harvard and Columbia turned him down, went on to the University of Halle in Germany, where Professor Benno Erdmann's interest in reading and perception led Dodge and his classmates to build a tachistoscope. Experiments with the instrument let him identify five kinds of eye movement, among them saccadic and pursuit movements, convergence, reflex compensation and the backswing. He taught philosophy at Ursinus College from 1896, edited the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the Journal of Comparative Psychology, and served as the twenty-fifth president of the American Psychological Association in 1916. Parkinson's disease forced his retirement in the mid 1930s, and he died in 1942.