Théodule-Armand Ribot

Théodule-Armand Ribot (1839 to 1916) was a French psychologist, born at Guingamp, who is known as the founder of scientific psychology in France. After teaching philosophy in high schools at Vesoul and Laval, he lectured on experimental psychology at the Sorbonne in 1885 and in 1888 was appointed professor of that subject at the College of France, where on 9 April 1888 he gave the first lecture in psychology in France. His doctoral thesis, Hérédité: étude psychologique, is considered to have introduced Darwinian and Spencerian evolutionary ideas to France, and he translated Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology. Ribot's law on retrograde amnesia carries his name, he wrote short monographs on diseases of memory, will and personality, and in 1896 he introduced the term anhedonia for the inability to feel pleasure. In 1889 he was co-president, with Jean-Martin Charcot, of the first international congress for experimental psychology.