Stanley Smith Stevens

Stanley Smith Stevens ( * November 4, 1906; † 18 January 1973) was an American psychologist.

Academic Career

In 1927, Stanley Smith Stevens wrote in the University of Utah and moved in 1929 to Stanford University, from which he in 1931 an AB Degree received. After a further 2 years as an assistant under Edwin G. Boring at Harvard University, he received his doctorate in psychology. He continued his psychological research 1932-1934 under Hallowell Davis at Harvard Medical School and continuing changed from 1935-1936 to the physical faculty of Harvard. He then moved to the founded, Psychological Department in 1934 ' and in 1938 was assistant professor of psychology. In 1940 he founded at the request of the U.S. Air Force, the psycho - acoustics laboratory for the study of strong noise levels on Menschen.1946 he was appointed full professor of psychology. At his own insistence his title in 1962, Professor for psychophysics changed '.

Scientific work

Stanley Smith Stevens suggested in 1936 as a unit of subjective loudness of a sound, the unit Sone before and developed with John Volkmann and Edwin Newman the mel scale for perceived pitch. The measurement problems of these two scales led to a general treatise on scale systems.

With the ' Handbook of Experimental Psychology ', he wrote in 1951 the standard work of experimental psychological research. In 1957 he introduced the Stevens' power.

The main work is considered the posthumously by his wife, as Issuer completed work ' Psychophysics '.