The letters between Louis Thurstone and Horacio Rimoldi

PIÑEDA, M. A.

Akron

Encuentro; Cheiron International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences Virtual Meeting 2022; 2022

Cheiron International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences

From a polycentric standpoint, this paper analyses the correspondence that occurred between 1948 and 1955 between two scholars from very different cultures. On the one hand, Louis Leon Thurstone (1887-1955), a professor at the University of Chicago who was president of the American Psychological Association (1932) and became one of the most important psychometricians of the 20th century. On the other hand, his Argentine disciple Horacio Rimoldi (1913-2006) who between 1939 and 1941 trained in factorial methods under the direction of William Stephenson (1902-1989), a disciple of Charles Spearman (1863-1945). In 1947 he settled in Chicago on a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue doctoral studies under the direction of Thurstone. He developed important research on cognitive processes and problem-solving and spread his influence in Latin America and some European countries. These 13 unpublished letters reveal aspects of the close relationship between the two of them. they also provide us with historical information to analyze the processes of migration of psychometric theories and practices under the model of the University of Chicago (United States) in the framework of international cooperation activities for research and university training in psychology. These processes are registered in three stages: 1) when a South American researcher, Horacio Rimoldi, tries to join the scientific career in an American academic community to complete his doctoral and postdoctoral training; 2) when the same academic tries to transplant these theories and practices to an Uruguayan university; 3) when Rimoldi decides to settle in the United States to continue his career as a researcher and trainer of researchers.