Olga Bridgman (March 30, 1886 - February 6, 1974), M. D., Ph. D., was a physician and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley.

Early life

Olga Bridgman was born in

Jackson, Michigan Jackson is the only city and county seat of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 33,534, down from 36,316 at the 2000 census. Located along Interstate 94 and U.S. Route 127, it is approxi ...

, on March 30, 1886, the daughter of Edwin Chester Bridgman (1862-1929), a prominent newspaper editor, and Alma Louise Antonia Goecker (1862-1943). Her paternal family migrated from England to Connecticut in 1690. She had two siblings: Dorothy E. Tefft (1887-1915) and Donald C. Bridgman (1887-1967). She attended public schools in Jackson and then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, obtaining a A.B. in 1908 and a M.D. in 1910. In 1913 she attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, obtaining a Psychology M.A. in 1914 and a Ph.D. in 1915. She was the first person to earn a doctoral degree in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.University of California History Digital Archives
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/ref> In 1937 she was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

Career

After graduation from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Olga Bridgman worked as resident physician in two Illinois public institutions and then moved to New Jersey to collaborate with

Henry H. Goddard Henry Herbert Goddard (August 14, 1866 – June 18, 1957) was a prominent American psychologist, eugenicist, and segregationist during the early 20th century. He is known especially for his 1912 work '' The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Her ...

on a version of the Binet's mental tests, the first to be developed in the United States. In 1915 she was appointed instructor in abnormal psychology and pediatrics at University of California, working with George M. Stratton and Warner Brown in what would become the Department of Psychology in 1922. She was professor of Psychology and Pediatrics at

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, on both San Francisco and Berkeley, for more than forty years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1956. She was: psychologist in San Francisco Juvenile Court; medical psychologist for the San Francisco Board of Health; director of the San Francisco Bureau of Mental Hygiene, Department of Health; consultant to the California State School for the Deaf; consultant to the Langley Porter Clinic. She was interested in child guidance, juvenile delinquency, and mental hygiene. In 1947 she organized the American Board of Professional Psychology. She was an author of articles in journals on mental hygiene, delinquency, Delinquency and mental deficiency. She was active in civic work. She was a member of the Women's Faculty Club at University of California and the San Francisco Women's City Club. She was a Diplomate in Psychiatry of the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry.

Personal life

Olga Bridgman moved to California in 1913 and lived at 1380 Monterey Blvd., San Francisco, California. She died on February 6, 1974, at San Mateo, California, and is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bridgman, Olga 1886 births 1974 deaths University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, San Francisco faculty UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni People from Jackson, Michigan University of Michigan Medical School alumni