ABSTRACT
George A. Kelly was born on April 28, 1905, on a farm in Kansas. He was the only child of devoutly religious parents, a doting mother and father trained as a Presbyterian minister. Kelly’s undergraduate degree was in physics and mathematics. Only after trying jobs as an aeronautical engineer and teacher of speech and drama, and winning an exchange scholarship to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, did he decide on a career in psychology. Kelly received his Ph.D. in 1931 from Iowa State University, with his dissertation dealing with speech and reading disabilities. He married Gladys Thompson shortly thereafter, and the Kellys were to have one daughter and one son.
