Roland Clark Davis

Roland Clark Davis (December 20, 1902– February 23, 1961) was an American psychologist recognized for his innovation in instrumentation and measurement of electrophysiological phenomena. Davis contributed to the measurement of electrodermal activity, gastric reflexes, and muscle action potentials. Davis published over 70 articles on psychophysiology and related topics across a 30-year career

Personal history Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 30, 1902, Roland Clark Davis was the eldest child of William Chalmers Davis and Effie Estelle Clark. Davis earned his A.B. in English from Harvard in 1924 and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1930. Upon leaving Columbia, Davis briefly worked as a research associate for the University of Virginia. They had two children, Susan Oliver and Christopher Meacham. He was returning home from a meeting at the Fels Research Institute when he suffered a heart attack.

Davis was the first to use a vacuum tube as a way to control the electrical current during measurement of the GSR. Davis also developed a device that provided an uninterrupted measurement of arterial blood pressure that would not interfere with the subject’s true blood pressure, and he is credited with introducing the cathode-ray oscilloscope technique for measuring muscle action potentials. arguing that the relevant terms needed to be more precisely defined and that responses could be adaptive even if they were not homeostatic:“Homeostasis can be maintained for one variable only at the expense of heterostasis in at least one other”. Modification of the Galvanic Reflex by Daily Repetition of a Stimulus (1934)

Homeostasis and Response Patterning Apparatus for Recording Autonomic States and Changes (1954) Response Patterns (1957) An Exploration of Somatic Response Patterns: Stimulus and Sex Differences (1957) The Domain of Homeostasis (1958) Properties of Electrodes Used in Recording Action Potentials from the Intact Organism (1936) Methods of Measuring Muscle Tension (1942) An Integrator and Accessory Apparatus for Recording Action Potentials (1948) Adaptation of the Muscular Tension Response to Gunfire (1949) Autonomic and Muscular Response and Their Relationship to Simple Stimuli (1955)

History of Psychology

American Psychology 1800-1885 (1936) Physiological Psychology: A View of Fifty Years (1958)