Allport, 69, Dies; Led in Psychology

Gordon W. Allport '19, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, died yesterday in Stillman Infirmary following an extended illness. He was 69 years old.

Allport was world-famous as a leading theorist in the field of personality psychology and an authority on group prejudice and race relations.

At Harvard, he was one of the fourman group of social scientists who founded the University's pioneering Department of Social Relations after World War II.

He directed graduate studies as Chairman of the Committee on Higher Degrees for the new department for 18 years, from 1946 to 1964. During the late 1940's and early 50's, he also taught the introductory undergraduate course in the department, Soc Rel 1A, a forerunner of the current Soc Rel 10.

Allport was always intensely proud that he had been associated almost continually with the University since he arrived as a freshman in 1915. He was born Nov. 11, 1897, in Montezuma, Ind., and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a physician, Dr. John Allport. When he came to Cambridge, an older brother, Floyd, was already here as a graduate student and instructor in psychology.

He initially intended to study social ethics here, which was taught in Emerson Hall under the Department of philosophy, but his brother convinced him to switch to psychology. Allport earned his A.B. in 1919, A.M. in 1921, and Ph.D. in 1922--all at Harvard and all in psychology.

Taught English

While a grad student, he spent a year teaching English at Robert College in Istanbul. He often spoke of his year as an English teacher, and in 1956, while on a trip to Athens, he attended a reunion staged by some of those former students.

After earning his doctorate, Allport spent three years studying in Germany and England. He was one of the first non-German popularizers of the theories of Gestalt psychology, which suggests that concepts are recorded by the mind as wholes, not as the sum of their component elements.

The only interruption in Allport's association with Harvard was a five-year stint at Dartmouth between 1927 and 1932. He returned to Harvard as an associate professor of Psychology, became full professor of psychology in 1942, and was given the newly-created Cabot chair in 1966.

Allport's international reputation was founded principally on two books, Personality: a Psychological Interpretation, (now a standard text) published in 1937, and The Nature of Prejudice (1954).

In 1936, he helped establish Harvard's first separate Department of Psychology. And in 1946. Allport, with Talcott Parsons (sociology), the late Clyde Kluckhohn (anthropology), and Henry Merry (clinical psychology), founded the first inter-disciplinary department in the social sciences in the United States. Harvard's Department of Social Relations. Parsons became its chairman and Allport headed its graduate division.

"All graduate students, including me, in one way or another, had their lives touched by him," Thomas F. Pettigrew, associate professor of Social Psychology, said of Allport last night.

Allport is survived by his wife, Ada, a son, Dr. Robert Allport, who is a physician in California, and three grandchildren. Services will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Christ Church, Cambridge, with burial to follow