16 - At the Universities of London and Paris

Summary

At the Congress for the Progress of Science at the World's Fair, I met Professor C. Spearman of the University of London, founder of simple factor analysis, which Professor Thurstone developed into multiple factor analysis. At the dinner offered by Thurstone in honor of the distinguished professor from London—to which I was invited—my teacher from Chicago asked if, considering that I had started working on my paper about the mathematical analysis of psychological factors, it wouldn't be a good idea to study for a month or two with Professor Spearman. The venerable professor from London agreed, and in late June 1934, after I finished my work with Thurstone, I went back to New York to tell Stacy May of my plan. He agreed, but, as my second year of scholarship ended in July, he told me that if my studies with Professor Spearman could not be concluded within a month, then I should apply for a research grant from the foundation's Paris office, to which he wrote in any case.

Stacy May also showed me a letter from Professor Goangă, who was concerned that I might stay to teach at Columbia or Duke. This would indicate, wrote Professor Goangă, that the Rockefeller Foundation does not prepare its scholarship recipients for their profession in their country of origin, but for American universities, toward which they are partial. He said that had he known this, he would have never given me two years’ leave for my scholarship.

I had received a similar letter after I asked for his opinion regarding professors McDougall and Thorndike's proposal. In that letter, I specified that by no means did I consider staying in the United States for good because neither my wife's parents nor mine would agree to it, and my wife and I did not wish to upset them. For this reason I meant to stay on for only a few years until I could take up a similar position at Cluj University—because the salary that I expected at Cluj was modest, insufficient for raising a family.