Gardner Murphy was a psychologist specializing in social and personality psychology, and parapsychology. He served as president of the American Psychological Association, and of the British Society for Psychical Research, and for a time held the Hodgson Fellowship in Psychical Research at Harvard University. He later was professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology at City College in New York, worked as director of research for the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, and was Director of the Parapsychology Foundation in 1951.