Abraham H. Maslow

Born in New York in 1908, Abraham H. Maslow was the first of seven children to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. He earned his BA (1930), MA (1931), and PhD (1934) in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Maslow taught at Brooklyn College and later at Brandeis, becoming Chair of Psychology in 1951. A humanistic psychologist, Maslow is renowned for his "hierarchy of needs" theory, essential for achieving "self-actualization." He was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1967. He attended the 1963 founding meeting of the Association for Humanistic Psychology but declined its presidency.