Restrictions

These files were restricted and not to be consulted until ten years after the death of the individual.

Provenance

Presented by Anne Roe and accessioned, 03/03/1978 (1978 308ms).

General physical description

Ca. 6000 items.

Related material

In addition to the Roe materials at the American Philosophical Society in the Anne Roe papers there is a box of unprocessed materials in the collection of her husband's--George Gaylord Simpson--Papers. [Mss Ms Coll 31] These materials include a dictated 50 page personal history, a file of miscellaneous records and correspondence dating from the 1950s and 1960s, correspondence relating to various honors and awards and a file of Rorschach protocols related to Roe's Painters' Summaries.

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

During the 1940s Anne Roe (wife of George Gaylord Simpson) was working on the book The Making of a Scientist, which was published in 1953. In it Roe tried to account for the psychological attributes -- intellectual aptitude, emotional make-up, and interests -- which characterized practitioners of the natural sciences, keeping their identities confidential. She collected material on 64 prominent scientists, including transcripts of interviews, Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Tests, personal data, and follow-ups she gathered over a decade later. The collection has two major limitations: 1) there is a ten-year restriction from the date of death of each scientist, thus rendering some files inaccessible to scholars at this time; 2) due to Roe's social biases, and the now questionable validity of some of the psychological tools she had relied on, the data and their interpretations require a critical eye. Nevertheless, within these limitations, the available files contain much valuable biographical material (including interesting anecdotes) and scientific bibliographies.