[7][8] Cattell authored, co-authored, or edited almost 60 scholarly books, more than 500 research articles, and over 30 standardized psychometric tests, questionnaires, and rating scales.

[13] Cattell was an early proponent of using factor analytic methods instead of what he called "subjective verbal theorizing" to explore empirically the basic dimensions of personality, motivation, and cognitive abilities.

[16] Cattell also undertook a series of empirical studies into the basic dimensions of other psychological domains: intelligence,[17] motivation,[18] career assessment and vocational interests.

He contributed to cognitive epidemiology with his theory that crystallized knowledge, while more applied, could be maintained or even increase after fluid ability begins to decline with age, a concept used in the National Adult Reading Test (NART).

Additional contributions include the Coefficient of Profile Similarity (taking account of shape, scatter, and level of two score profiles); P-technique factor analysis based on repeated measurements of a single individual (sampling of variables, rather than sampling of persons); dR-technique factor analysis for elucidating change dimensions (including transitory emotional states, and longer-lasting mood states); the Taxonome program for ascertaining the number and contents of clusters in a data set; the Rotoplot program for attaining maximum simple structure factor pattern solutions.

[8] As well, he put forward the Dynamic Calculus for assessing interests and motivation,[18][36] the Basic Data Relations Box (assessing dimensions of experimental designs),[37] the group syntality construct ("personality" of a group),[38] the triadic theory of cognitive abilities,[39] the Ability Dimension Analysis Chart (ADAC),[40] and Multiple Abstract Variance Analysis (MAVA), with "specification equations" to embody genetic and environmental variables and their interactions.

The story epitomizes scientific effort at its best.Raymond Cattell was born on 20 March 1905 in Hill Top, West Bromwich, a small town in England near Birmingham where his father's family was involved in inventing new parts for engines, automobiles and other machines.

The Curies and Rutherford in that year penetrated the heart of the atom and the mystery of its radiations, Alfred Binet launched the first intelligence test, and Einstein, the theory of relativity.

[1][42] When Cattell was about five years old, his family moved to Torquay, Devon, in the south-west of England, where he grew up with strong interests in science and spent a lot of time sailing around the coastline.

He was the first of his family (and the only one in his generation) to attend university: in 1921, he was awarded a scholarship to study chemistry at King's College, London, where he obtained a BSc (Hons) degree with 1st-class honors at age 19 years.

He writes: [I] browsed far outside science in my reading and attended public lectures—Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Huxley, and Shaw being my favorite speakers (the last, in a meeting at King's College, converted me to vegetarianism)—for almost two years!

[44]As he observed first-hand the terrible destruction and suffering after World War I, Cattell was increasingly attracted to the idea of applying the tools of science to the serious human problems that he saw around him.

[1] During World War II, Cattell served as a civilian consultant to the U.S. government researching and developing tests for selecting officers in the armed forces.

Cattell returned to teaching at Harvard and married Alberta Karen Schuettler, a PhD student in mathematics at Radcliffe College.

[50] Herbert Woodrow, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was searching for someone with a background in multivariate methods to establish a research laboratory.

[51][52] During the last two decades of his life in Hawaii, Cattell continued to publish a variety of scientific articles, as well as books on motivation, the scientific use of factor analysis, two volumes of personality and learning theory, the inheritance of personality, and co-edited a book on functional psychological testing, as well as a complete revision of his highly renowned Handbook of Multivariate Experimental Psychology.

[1] When Cattell began his career in psychology in the 1920s, he felt that the domain of personality was dominated by speculative ideas that were largely intuitive with little/no empirical research basis.

He drew a comparison between these fundamental, underlying (source) traits and the basic dimensions of the physical world that were discovered and presented, for example, in the periodic table of chemical elements.

[15] In 1960, Cattell organized and convened an international symposium to increase communication and cooperation among researchers who were using multivariate statistics to study human behavior.

In the 1920s, Cattell worked with Charles Spearman who was developing the new statistical technique of factor analysis in his effort to understand the basic dimensions and structure of human abilities.

Factor analysis became a powerful tool to help uncover the basic dimensions underlying a confusing array of surface variables within a particular domain.

[14] He believed that if exploratory factor analysis were applied to a wide range of measures of interpersonal functioning, the basic dimensions within the domain of social behavior could be identified.

He then conducted a programmatic series of factor analyses on the data derived from each of the three measurement media in order to elucidate the dimensionality of human personality structure.

He decided to name these traits with letters (A, B, C, D, E...) in order to avoid misnaming these newly discovered dimensions, or inviting confusion with existing vocabulary and concepts.

[75][76] From the very beginning of his academic career, Cattell reasoned that, as in other scientific domains like intelligence, there might be an additional, higher level of organization within personality which would provide a structure for the many primary traits.

[80] Cattell's programmatic multivariate research which extended from the 1940s through the 70's[81][82][83] resulted in several books that have been widely recognized as identifying fundamental taxonomic dimensions of human personality and motivation and their organizing principles: The books listed above document a programmatic series of empirical research studies based on quantitative personality data derived from objective tests (T-data), from self-report questionnaires (Q-data), and from observer ratings (L-data).

They argue that Cattell adhered to a mixture of eugenics and a new religion of his devising which he eventually named Beyondism and proposed as "a new morality from science".

[91] Mehler claimed that "it is unconscionable to honor this man whose work helps to dignify the most destructive political ideas of the twentieth century".

Any other belief would be antithetical to my life's work" and saying that "it is unfortunate that the APA announcement ... has brought misguided critics' statements a great deal of publicity.

In 1984, Cattell said that: "The only reasonable thing is to be noncommittal on the race question – that's not the central issue, and it would be a great mistake to be sidetracked into all the emotional upsets that go on in discussions of racial differences.