Walter Dill Scott

Born in 1869 in Illinois, Walter Dill Scott became one of the early figures in applied psychology. He studied in the United States and in Germany, where he worked under Wilhelm Wundt, and he became especially known for showing how psychological ideas could be used in advertising and in the workplace.

Scott wrote influential books on advertising and on the psychology of business, helping shape the young fields of industrial and organizational psychology. During World War I, he also worked on methods for selecting military personnel, part of a broader effort to apply psychological testing to real-world decisions.

He later served as president of Northwestern University from 1920 to 1939. Scott died in 1955, remembered both as a university leader and as an important early advocate for putting psychology to practical use.