Martin, Lillien Jane (1851–1943)

US psychologist. She founded the first mental health clinic for normal children at Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco, California, in 1920, and became an authority on gerontology. At age 78, she established the world's first old-age counselling centre, and in 1937 she opened a farm in Alameda County, California, ‘to give employment and restore self-confidence to a group of elderly men’. She was active there until her death at the age of 93.

Martin was born in Olean, New York. She studied science at Vassar College and taught high school until 1894, when she travelled to Germany to study experimental psychology at the University of Göttingen. Returning to the USA, she taught and conducted research at Stanford University for 17 years and published nine books.