Science & invention
Rensis Likert
1903–1981 · social psychologist
Psychologist behind the Likert scale and founder of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor.
- Born
Cheyenne, Wyoming- Died
Ann Arbor, Michigan
aged 78- Detroit years
- 1920s; 1946–1981
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Likert was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1903 and came to the University of Michigan to study civil engineering, like his father, a Union Pacific engineer; he switched to economics and sociology and graduated in 1926. His 1932 Columbia dissertation introduced the rating scale that bears his name, now used in countless opinion surveys. He worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and during World War II led the morale division of the Strategic Bombing Survey. In 1946 he and his team accepted an invitation to set up the Survey Research Center at Michigan, which became the Institute for Social Research in 1949 when the Center for Group Dynamics joined from MIT. He directed the institute until 1970, making Ann Arbor a world center of survey science, and wrote on participative management in New Patterns of Management (1961). He died in Ann Arbor in 1981.
Highlights
- Created the Likert scale (1932)
- Founded the Survey Research Center (1946), which became the Institute for Social Research (1949)
- Director of the Institute for Social Research until 1970
- New Patterns of Management (1961) on participative management
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1946–1970
Institute for Social Research (University of Michigan), Thompson Street building
The survey research institute he founded and directed; it grew out of his 1946 Survey Research Center.