author
Albert T. (Albert Theodore) Poffenberger
1885–1977
A quiet but influential figure in early American psychology, this scholar helped shape the field both in the laboratory and in professional life. He is especially remembered for work on reaction time and for a long career at Columbia University.
1 Audiobook
The Sense of Taste
by Harry L. (Harry Levi) Hollingworth, Albert T. (Albert Theodore) Poffenberger
About the author
Born in Dauphin, Pennsylvania, in 1885, Albert Theodore Poffenberger became an American psychologist whose career grew alongside psychology’s rise as a modern science. He studied at Bucknell University and then at Columbia University, where he spent much of his professional life on the faculty.
Poffenberger worked in experimental and applied psychology, and he is still associated with research on reaction time, including the phenomenon often called the Poffenberger paradigm. He also wrote for broader audiences interested in how psychology could be used in everyday and practical settings.
Beyond his own research, he played an important role in the profession itself. He served as president of the American Psychological Association in 1935, and later remembrances described him as a modest, steady presence whose scholarship and service mattered deeply at Columbia and within APA.