Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania on March 20, 1904. His father was a lawyer and his mother stayed home with her sons. His brother Edward died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 16. During high school, Skinner became an atheist. After attending Hamilton College, where he decided he wanted Tonne a writer, Skinner enrolled in the Psychology Department of Harvard. Skinner invented his operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box, with which he studied the use of reinforcement to strengthen behavior on rats. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1931, he stayed on at Harvard as a researcher, until 1936, when he married Yvonne Blue and accepted a teaching position in Minnesota. When WWII started, Skinner began to
