Henry William Riecken (November 11, 1917 – December 27, 2012) was an American psychologist.
Riecken was born on November 11, 1917, and was raised in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. He obtained a bachelor's degree from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1939, and completed a master's degree in psychology from the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...
in 1941. Following his service in the
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
in the midst of World War II, Riecken earned a doctorate from the Harvard University Department of Social Relations in 1949. He began teaching at Harvard upon finishing his doctoral studies and later joined the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
faculty. Riecken left Minnesota for
Washington, D. C.
)
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
in 1958, where he became the first director of the social science division of the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
. Between 1966 and 1968, Riecken was vice president of the
Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is a US-based, independent, international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines. Established in Manhattan in 1923, it today maintains a he ...
, and succeeded
Edward Pendleton Herring as president in 1968, serving in that position until 1971. The next year, Riecken joined the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
faculty. He taught at Penn as the Francis Boyer Professor of Behavioral Sciences until 1985. Riecken returned to Washington D. C. as adviser to the
Council on Library Resources
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an American independent, nonprofit organization. It works with libraries, cultural institutions, and higher learning communities on developing strategies to improve research, teaching, an ...
and other nonprofit, educational organizations. He was a fellow of the
American Psychological Society
The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...
and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
.
Riecken was married to Frances Manson Brown from 1955 to her death in 2011. The couple had three children. Henry Riecken died of intestinal cancer on December 27, 2012, at an assisted living facility in Washington, D. C. He was 95.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Riecken, Henry
1917 births
2012 deaths
Deaths from cancer in Washington, D.C.
Deaths from colorectal cancer
20th-century American psychologists
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellows of the American Psychological Association
University of Minnesota faculty
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Harvard University faculty
Harvard University alumni
University of Connecticut alumni
United States National Science Foundation officials
Scientists from New York City
People from Brooklyn
United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
Members of the National Academy of Medicine