Awards

National Academies (1901)

American Association for the Advancement of Science

About John Bergström

John Andrew Bergström was born October 28, 1867 in Blidsberg, Sweden and died March 1, 1910 in Palo Alto, California. He attended schools in Sweden before earning his B.A. in 1890 at Wesleyan University (Connecticut). He was a teacher in a private school in Middletown, Connecticut before earning his Ph.D. at Clark University in 1894. Bergström was on the faculty at Indiana University as assistant professor (1894-1896), associate professor (1896-1902) and professor of education and director of the psychological laboratory (1902-1908). He was among the earliest experimental psychologists at IU, working in the newly expanded psychological laboratory in the early 1890s. He was interested in variables controlling human motor performance and learning; research areas that he shared in common with the young professor William Bryan who would later become IU’s longest serving president. Bergström was credited with the design and manufacture of apparatus for the psychology laboratory. He was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1901 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. He was subsequently on the faculty at Stanford University from 1908-1910 as its first professor of educational psychology, before his untimely death from surgical complications to remove a brain tumor.