Tsuruko Haraguchi

Tsuruko Haraguchi (1886 to 1915) was a Japanese psychologist and the first Japanese woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy. Born Tsuru Arai in Tomioka, she studied at Japan Women's University and then travelled to the United States, entering Teachers College, Columbia University in 1907, where she was taught by Edward Thorndike, Robert S. Woodworth and James McKeen Cattell. Her doctoral thesis Mental Fatigue, completed in 1912 under Thorndike, found that mental fatigue can be transferred from task to task and that efficiency increases after continuous work. Back in Japan she expanded it into Studies on Mental Work and Fatigue in 1914 and lectured at Japan Women's University. She died in 1915.