Delabarre, Edmund Burke, 1863-

Edmund Burke Delabarre was born in Dover, Maine, on September 25, 1863. He graduated from Amherst College in 1886. He spent the following six years studying in Berlin, at Harvard under William James, at Freiburg with Muensterberg, and at Sorbonne with Binet. In 1890, he joined the faculty of Brown as the university's first Professor of Psychology. There he established the Brown Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. He retired from the university in 1932.

Delabarre was a pioneer in the field of shape perception and on the interaction between mental processes and the involuntary movements of the body. Also, he was one of the first to use ink blots to encourage mental imagery. His interest in inscriptions on rocks led him to author his most famous book Dighton Rock in 1929, which detailed his interpretation and citing several other interpretations of the inscriptions.

Edmund Delabarre died in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 16, 1945.

From the guide to the Edmund Delabarre papers, 1902-1998, (Center for the History of Psychology)