76 years ago today, on August 9, 1949 (July 15, 1949 in the lunar calendar), American psychologist Thorndike died. Edward Lee Thorndike (1874.08. 31-1949.08.09) is an American psychologist, the pioneer of animal psychology, the founder of psychological connectionism and the founder of educational psychology system. He proposed a series of laws of learning, including the law of practice and the law of effect. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1912 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1917. Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) was born on August 31, 1874 in Massachusetts, USA. His father was originally a lawyer and later a priest. As a child, he is ugly, shy and lonely by nature. He can only find fun in his study, and he is particularly talented for learning. His high school grades have always been in the top or two. In 1891, he set foot on Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut, majoring in English. When he graduated in 1895, he received his highest average in 50 years. In his autobiography, he wrote that he didn't remember "hearing or seeing the word psychology" until his junior year in college, when he had to take a compulsory course. He became interested in psychology only after reading William James' Principles of Psychology. He went to Harvard to continue his graduate work, planning to study English, philosophy and psychology, but after two classes by James, he was completely fascinated by the last course. He received another Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard in 1896 and a Master of Arts degree in 1897. Despite his great respect for James, he chose a subject "Intuition and Intellectual Behavior of Chickens" that is very uncharacteristic of James. Later in life, he said, the original motivation was "mainly to meet the need to obtain credits and diplomas ¡­ at that time, there was obviously no special interest in animals". At that time, James no longer engaged in experimental psychology, but he agreed to the topic and offered a space in his basement to Thorndike, who didn't have a large enough laboratory, for animal experiments. In 1898, when Thorndike failed to pursue a beautiful young lady (whom Thorndike later married), Columbia University hired him as a university judge and offered him a scholarship. He took two of the best-trained chickens to New York, and continued to complete his doctorate in this more convenient place for research. The instructor was James McKim Cattle, who was conducting research on measuring intelligence through human tests. Although Thorndike later took psychiatric tests, in order to complete his doctoral thesis, he had to continue his own animal study research. He completed his famous research on the mystery cage, thus earning his Ph.D. Thorndike became a psychology lecturer at Columbia University Teachers College in 1899. According to Cartel's suggestion, Thorndike applied his animal research techniques to children and young adults. After that, he increasingly used people as test subjects, and spent a lot of time in the fields of human learning and educational psychological testing. The rest of his fruitful life was spent at Columbia University Teachers College, except for a year spent as a faculty member at the Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. During his academic career, he published a total of 507 books, monographs and academic papers, a record achievement that later psychologists, probably no one except Piaget, can compare with. This fruitful life ended only a few weeks short of his seventy-fifth birthday on August 9, 1949.