1857–1911

FRENCH PSYCHOLOGIST, INTELLIGENCE RESEARCHER

SORBONNE, DOCTORATE IN NATURAL SCIENCE, 1894

Brief Overview

Alfred Binet is best remembered as the developer of the first useful test for measuring intelligence. Along with Théodore Simon, Binet developed the Binet-Simon Scale, the forerunner of modern IQ tests. Binet's original goal for the scale was relatively modest and very practical. In the early years of the 1900s, the French government had just enacted laws requiring that all children be given a public education. For the first time, mentally "subnormal" children—those who today might be called mentally retarded or developmentally disabled—were to be provided with special classes, rather than simply ignored by the schools. However, this raised the issue of how to identify which children would benefit from special programs. Binet and Simon set out to solve this problem. In the process, they developed a revolutionary approach to testing mental...