Alfred Binet

Binet built the first workable intelligence scale in Paris in 1905, with Théodore Simon, for one specific purpose: the French government wanted to find the children who needed extra teaching. He said repeatedly that it measured present performance rather than fixed capacity, that intelligence could be improved by training, and that a single number should never stand as a verdict on a child. American psychologists took the scale, attached the intelligence quotient to it, and used it for precisely what he had warned against, including immigration screening and sterilisation hearings. The title on this page is a 1914 English translation and uses the clinical vocabulary of its period for children with learning disabilities, which was neutral then and reads badly now. He also studied chess players, suggestibility and his own daughters. He died in 1911.