author
Alfred Binet
1857–1911
Best known for helping create the first practical intelligence test, this French psychologist also helped shape modern child psychology. His work began as an effort to understand how children learn and how schools could better support them.
3 Audiobooks
La Suggestibilité
by Alfred Binet
Mentally Defective Children
by Alfred Binet, Théodore Simon
About the author
Born in Nice, France, in 1857, Alfred Binet became one of the key figures in early psychology. He is most widely remembered for developing the Binet–Simon scale with Théodore Simon, a test designed to identify schoolchildren who needed extra educational help.
Binet's wider work reached far beyond testing alone. He studied memory, attention, suggestibility, and individual differences, and he played an important role in establishing experimental psychology in France. He also directed research at the laboratory of physiological psychology at the Sorbonne.
What makes his legacy especially interesting is that he did not see intelligence as a fixed number that defined a person's worth. His original aim was practical and humane: to create tools that could help children learn more effectively. He died in Paris in 1911, but his influence can still be felt in psychology and education today.