University of Chicago. Department of education

Robert J. Havighurst was born in DePere, Wisconsin on June 5, 1900. He grew up in Ohio and Illinois where his father, a former Professor of History at Lawrence College in Wisconsin, served as a Methodist minister. He received his A.B. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1921 and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Ohio State University in 1924. After a post-doctoral fellowship in physics at Harvard University (1924-1926) and a brief assistant professorship in chemistry at Miami University in Ohio (1927-1928), Havighurst moved gradually away from the physical sciences toward the study of science education, and finally to research, teaching, and consulting in general education. While assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1928-1932), Havighurst also served as advisor in the experimental college there. Committed thereafter to the study of education, he went on to an associate professorship in science education at the Ohio State University (1932-1934), and then to the directorship of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Board of General Education (1934-1940). At the Rockefeller Foundation, Havighurst bridged into the field of developmental psychology, taking over the directorship of the program in child and adolescent development vacated by colleague Lawrence K. Frank.

Havighurst assumed the position of Professor of Education and Executive Secretary to the Committee on Child Development at the University of Chicago in 1940. While at Chicago, Havighurst collaborated with sociologist Ernest W. Burgess to study the social adjustment of retired professionals. The major publications resulting from this research, Personal Adjustment in Old Age (1949), Older People (1953), and The Meaning of Work and Retirement (1954), overturned conventional notions of old age as a period of non-productivity by revealing that the elderly enjoy fulfilling pursuits and a heightened sense of psychological well-being. In the later Kansas City Studies of Adult Life, Havighurst expanded this research to include the study of the process of aging beginning with early middle age. In 1946, along with Burgess and Lawrence K. Frank, Havighurst co-founded the Gerontological Society as an interdisciplinary professional organization, thus pioneering the establishment of gerontology as a social scientific discipline. At the University of Chicago, under Havighurst’s leadership as Executive Secretary (1940-1949) and Chairman (1949-1954), the Committee on Child Development became the Committee on Human Development, broadening its teaching and research agenda to address not only child development but the entire human life cycle from birth to old age. The Ph.D. curriculum developed by the Committee became a model for, and produced the scholars who went on to teach in similar programs at other universities.

At the same time, Havighurst pursued teaching and research on adolescence and education. In small town as well as urban, U.S. as well as comparative international contexts, Havighurst carried out long-term studies of the relationships among social class, culture, moral and practical development, and education. His most influential publications in this area are the widely used textbooks Human Development and Education (1953) and Society and Education (1957, co-authored with Bernice L. Neugarten).

Havighurst was known as an active citizen of Chicago as well as an energetic researcher. He served terms as president of the Hyde Park Community Council and as vice-president of the Citizens Schools Committee of Chicago. He was a member of the City Club of Chicago, director of the Mental Health Society of Greater Chicago, and co-chairman of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. In 1966 he chaired a meeting at which civil rights activists, pacifists, and other liberal Chicago groups considered banding together to form a third political party. As primary author of a 1964 report on Chicago public schools commissioned by the Chicago Board of Education, Havighurst strongly advocated comprehensive racial integration in Chicago’s public schools. Havighurst died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 90 on February 1, 1991.

From the guide to the Havighurst, Robert J.. Papers, 1921-1991, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)