SUMMARY: B. F. Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990 American psychologist

B. F. Skinner Books

B. F. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904. He was born in the town or Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. His father was one of the best lawyers there were at the time. His mother was a strong and intelligent housewife.

She could cook the best food ever, in B.F. Skinner’s opinion. Both of his parents were old-fashioned hard working people. His parents were very strict they wanted him to succeed, and they were consistent.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was his full birth name but later in life he chose to go by a simpler version of his name. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a loving out going boy who was very affectionate. He also loved the outdoors, and he loved to take things apart and build them over again. He also loved to go to school and make friends.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner received his BA in English when he was in college. He attended collage at Hamilton college in upstate New York. In college he was kind of a outcast, he didn’t fit in very well.

He never attended the fraternity parties of the football games, and didn’t have many friends or very many acquaintances except the professors. This made him more focused on his goals. He would write the school paper with his spare time.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner believed in the atheist religion by choice. This was very wired in his case because he went to a college that required a class of chapel attendance every day. He had learned about other religion but he wasn’t sure what to believe.

He wanted to be a writer ever since he started writing for the school paper. He tried to get some jobs as a writer by sending in poetry and short stories to people who had ads in the paper but no one hired him.

After Skinner graduated he tried to use his parents’ attic as an office and a place to concentrate. This wasn’t the best place for him to work but it was all that he had. After a wile he realized that it just wouldn’t work for him.

The only work he could find was a newspaper writer. He wrote things mostly about labor problems. Not his choice but he got to do what he loved, so he bargained. He lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City as a bohemian.

After Frederic Skinner finished doing some traveling and decided to settle down he decided that now would be the best time to finish school so that he didn’t give up forever and lose the opportunity.

This time Frederic decided to try a different school that he might have a better chance at, so he decided to go to Harvard. Harvard was the best school in the area and close enough that he could walk if he needed to.

In 1930 Burrhus Frederic Skinner got his masters degree in psychology. Than he decided to go on to get his doctorate degree, and he finished with that in 1931. After he finished both the doctorate and psychology degrees he stayed on campus to do research until 1936.

After he finished studying he decided to move to Minneapolis, there he became a professor at the University in Minnesota. There he met a woman and got married. His wife was a young pretty woman by the name of Yvonne Blue.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner and his new wife had two beautiful daughters. Skinner soon became a professor at Harvard and he remained there for the rest of his life where he could do his research and teach. He had a very fulfilling life.

Skinner in a nut shell was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform and poet.

He taught psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology – the experimental analysis of behavior.

His works are still used and applied today, and he is considered one of most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles, both about psychology and other subjects.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a very good teacher who had a great and smart mind, and he should be remembered for that.