Harry Kirke Wolfe was mostly known as an early American psychologist and educator. For the most part of his career, Wolfe taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. However, Harry published very little, focusing on his teaching at the university.
Background
Harry Kirke Wolfe was born on November 10, 1858, in Bloomington, Illinois, United States. He was a son of Jacob Vance Wolfe and Eliza Ellen Batterhorn, both teachers. However, Harry's father, Jacob, also served for fifteen years as a high school principal, lawyer and legislator in Indiana.
Education
In 1871, Harry's family settled on a farm in Nebraska, near Lincoln. There, his parents maintained a cultured home, reared and educated a large family and supported educational and political institutions. Harry Kirke, the eldest son, took a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1880. As a senior student at the university, Wolfe took a course, that would eventually have ties to his later career - a year-long mandatory class for all seniors on Mental and Moral Philosophy.
In 1883, Harry went to Humboldt University of Berlin to get a doctorate in classics. Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of his mentors at the university. The next year, however, Wolfe transferred to Leipzig University, and became one of the early American students in Psychology, studying with Wilhelm Wundt. In 1886, he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Leipzig.
Also, in 1886, Harry published his doctoral thesis on tonal memory. Wolfe chose to investigate retention by the method of recognition, the method, that requires a stimulus to be present and the subject to make a judgment about the stimulus. This paradigm lends itself well to psychophysical methods, which are what Wolfe used in his research on memory for tones. He believed, that recognition memory was a simpler and more basic memory process, that recognized objects or events as familiar or unfamiliar.
After graduation from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1880, Wolfe spent the next three years, working as a teacher and principal in three different Nebraska public schools. Having received a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Leipzig University in 1886, Harry returned to Nebraska as a high school teacher. In 1888, he served as an educator in San Luis Obispo, California.
Wolfe returned to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1889, commissioned to organize work in Philosophy and Psychology. At first, designated lecturer, he became in 1890 an associate professor and, in 1891, he was made a professor and head of the Department of Philosophy. He at once began to prepare a laboratory for Experimental Psychology, one of the earliest to be established in America. The work was immediately successful. In a half dozen years, he had sent forward into eastern graduate schools such men, as Walter B. Pillsbury, Madison Bentley, Hartley Alexander and several others of professional note, while students were crowding his classrooms and laboratories.
In the spring of 1897, certain administrative problems hung over the University of Nebraska. The effort of Wolfe to bear some hand in their solution proved unfortunate and resulted in action by the Board of Regents, on March 29, 1897, to discontinue his services. It seems clear, that both sides to that controversy used less, than sound judgment. But its effects upon the professional career of Wolfe were disastrous. He was indeed offered other posts in Psychology. But hoping still and always to serve the people of the West, he rejected offers from distant universities and threw himself rather into the work of modernizing the secondary schools.
From 1897 to 1901, Harry was superintendent of schools in South Omaha, and, from 1902 to 1905, he held the post of principal of Lincoln High School. In 1905, Wolfe went to the University of Montana as a professor of Philosophy and Education but returned to the University of Nebraska in 1906 as a professor of Educational Psychology. Three years later, he was shifted back to his old position and became a professor of Philosophy, his own portion of the work lying then, however, entirely in Psychology. Harry taught at the university until his sudden death from angina pectoris in 1918.
It's also important to note, that, being a member of the Nebraska Society for Child Study, which was established in 1895, Wolfe was a frequent speaker at local round tables, education meetings, to parent groups and at some commencement activities. He was a popular speaker, knowledgeable about the child study literature, and inspiring in his call for people to join the "greatest educational movement" the world has ever experienced. Besides, he was instrumental in founding the American Journal of Psychology.
Moreover, Harry Kirk Wolfe wrote 55 scholarly articles, primarily on child psychology. Much assembled psychological material remained unpublished after his death.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"Too much obedience may ruin character, may dwarf the intellect, may paralyse the will of children and of adults."
Membership
Harry was a member of the executive committee of the Nebraska Society for Child Study.
Personality
Wolfe possessed a personality of rare attractiveness and had a peculiar genius for teaching. Under his inspiration, the New Psychology, with the educational and social program, suggested by it, carried a marked stimulation. Yet, his dominant interest was essentially ethical - a passion for human welfare to be advanced by sound and educated thinking and acting. This also fostered his lifelong interest in Philosophy, in which he resembled his own teacher, Wundt.
Physical Characteristics:
Wolfe died of angina pectoris.
Connections
Harry married Katherine H. (Brandt) Wolfe on December 19, 1888.