A Memorial to Cattell  by Devon Elaine Cattell Gonzales

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Dr. Cattell's Obituary

The following death notice was posted by Raymond B. Cattell student, John Horn. Dr. Cattell withdrew his name for consideration for the Gold Medal Award two weeks before his death. The Blue Ribbon committee that was organized to review the decision has been disbanded leaving the Cattell affair unresolved. The award, however, was never bestowed.

Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 01:37:10 -0800
Reply-To: SEMNET Discussion List <SEMNET@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
Sender: SEMNET Discussion List <SEMNET@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
From: John Horn <jhorn@almaak.usc.edu>
To: SEMNET@UA1VM.UA.EDU

Raymond B. Cattell died in his sleep, at his home in Honolulu, on the evening of February 2. Born in 1905, he would have celebrated his 93rd birthday on March 15. He had been sick with colon cancer, prostate cancer and congestive heart failure. The latter was the primary cause if death. His son, Harry, a physician, reported that his father's heart had become very weak. Over the last several months, it had been pumping only a fraction of the blood needed to sustain life. It was a marvel, Harry said, that his father had held on to life for so long.

Cattell received the "Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychological Science," announced in the American Psychologist, August, 1997 (52.8: 797-799.). The citation accompanying the award reads as follows:

In a remarkable 70-year career, Raymond B. Cattell has made prodigious, landmark contributions to psychology, including factor analytic mapping of the domains of personality, motivation, and abilities; exploration of three different medias of assessment; separation of fluid and crystallized intelligence; and numerous methodological innovations. Thus,Cattell became recognized in numerous substantive areas, providing a model of the complete psychologist in an age of specialization. It may be said that Cattell stands without peer in his creation of a unified theory of individual differences integrating intellectual, temperamental, and dynamic domains of personality in the context of environmental and hereditary influences.

Take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.

Full text in PsychArticles. http://www-mi4.csa.com/ids70/view_record.php?id=4&recnum=6&SID=7a795faab69838297ca13fe7158451bd&mark_id=cache%3A2%2C0%2C30

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Obit (2/4/98)