James Olds

Biography

Early life and education

Olds was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Nyack, New York. His father, Leland Olds, later became chairman of the Federal Power Commission during the 1940s. His grandfather George D. Olds was the ninth president of Amherst College.

Olds attended college at a number of schools including St. John's College, Annapolis, and the University of Wisconsin but received his undergraduate B.A. from Amherst College in 1947. His undergraduate years were interrupted by military service with the U.S. Army during World War 2 as part of the Persian Gulf Command. After the war, Olds obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations supervised by Professor Richard L. Solomon. His thesis concerned motivation and resulted in his subsequent interest in the biological basis of motivation.

Olds married Marianne E. Olds in 1947. They had two children, Jacqueline Olds and James L. Olds.

Career

After obtaining his Ph.D., Olds did postdoctoral work at McGill University supervised by Donald Olding Hebb, where he made his most important discovery with Peter Milner. Subsequently, Olds relocated to UCLA, where he received his first academic appointment at the Brain Research Institute. In 1957 Olds was appointed associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He left Michigan in 1969 to become the Bing Professor of Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology where he continued his research and headed up a large laboratory until his death as a result of a swimming accident in August 1976. His last work concerned research of the mechanisms of learning and memory.