Gesell, Arnold Lucius (1880–1961)

US psychologist and educator. He founded the Yale Clinic of Child Development, which he directed 1911–48. Among the first to study the stages of normal development, he worked as a consultant to the Gesell Institute of Child Development, New Haven, Connecticut, which was founded 1950 to promote his educational ideas.

Gesell was born in Alma, Wisconsin, and received his PhD from Clark University 1906. Appointed to the Yale University faculty, he received a medical degree from Yale 1915 and became a professor of child hygiene, publishing both scholarly and popular works on child psychology.