Born Klara Imredy on December 30, 1912 in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, Kalman Imredy, was an official in the Hungarian State Railroads and served as its president from 1942 to 1944. Klara Imredy received her baccalaureate from Petrus Pazmany University in 1932 and studied English Literature for a year in Kings College, Univer-sity of London. She returned to Pazmany in 1934 and studied psychology. She received her doctorate in 1946.
In 1940, she married a professor of psychology at Pazmany, Paul Harkai Schiller. They were married for ten years and had a daughter, Christina. In 1947, the Schillers moved to the United States. In 1948, Paul Schiller took a position at the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Florida. He was killed the next year in a skiing accident. Following her husband's death, Claire Schiller taught history and languages at the Bartram School in Jacksonville, Florida. She retired in 1981.
In collaboration with Karl Lashley, head of the Yerkes Laboratories when Paul Schiller was employed there, Claire Schiller edited and translated a collection of articles entitled Instinctive Behavior . Published in 1957, Instinctive Behavior introduced the new field of ethology to many American psychologists and zoologists. That same year, Schiller and Lashley married. The marriage, however, was brief as Karl Lashley died in August 1958.
From the guide to the Claire Imredy Schiller Lashley Papers, 1939-1984, 1947-1958, (Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida)
