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Biography
Orville Gilbert Brim, a social psychologist who served as president of the Russell Sage Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development, led pioneering research on early childhood and middle age, and is the author of books exploring the nature of ambition and the desire for fame.

Dr. Brim joined the Russell Sage Foundation of New York City in 1955 and was named president in 1964. he led the foundation's successful effort to encourage the law schools at leading universities to include courses in social science research in their curricula -- for example, by accompanying courses in criminal law with courses in crime and its origins. the concept was later extended to schools of medicine and journalism.

In 1974, Dr. Brim was appointed president of the Foundation for Child Development. During his 12-year tenure he expanded the foundation's field of inquiry and support, which had been centered on welfare programs for children, to include study of their social and psychological development.

Under his leadership, the first National Survey of Children was undertaken, in 1976, and three years later he established through the foundation a new, not-for-profit organization, Child Trends, in Washington, D.C. Over the last 30 years Child Trends has become the nation's leading repository and clearinghouse of past and current information about America's children, an essential resource for policymakers and scholars alike.

After leaving the Foundation for Child Development in 1985, Dr. Brim wrote the first of his two books exploring widely-known but little-studied aspects of human behavior. Ambition: How We Manage Success and Failure Throughout Our Lives, was published in 1992, and for a scholarly work reached an unusually wide and varied audience. it has since been reprinted and translated into several languages.

His second book, Look at Me!: The Fame Motive from Childhood to Death, examines the desire to be famous in people of different ages, backgrounds and social status, and how succeeding or failing to achieve fame affected their lives, both outwardly and inwardly. It was published in 2009.

Over the years Dr. Brim was the co-author or editor of 12 additional books and more than 30 scholarly articles. He served on the Advisory Committee on Child Development of the National Academy of Sciences (1971-76), was Chairman of the Special Commission on the Social Sciences of the National Science Foundation (1968-69), served as Chairman of the Board of the American Institutes for Research (1988-90), and as a member of the Board of the William T. Grant Foundation (1975-84). He was President of the American Orthopsychiatric Association (1974-75), and served in a number of leadership positions as a member of the American Sociological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Brim was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Gerontological Society, and the Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues.

In 1991, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation asked Dr. Brim to lead the Foundation's Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, which to this day remains the most thorough and extensive examination of middle age ever carried out.

Over the next ten years, the Network conducted dozens of separate studies of midlife drawn from interviews of more than 7,000 Americans of both sexes, aged 25 to 74. The basic findings, which received nationwide attention when announced in early 1999, were that Americans tend to feel younger than they really are; that, for most, "midlife crisis" is a myth, and midlife itself - especially the years 40 to 60 - is a time of good health, psychic equanimity, productive activity and satisfying personal and community relationships. in summarizing the findings, Dr. Brim declared, "On balance, the sense we all have is that midlife is the best place to be."

The complete findings of the MacArthur project appeared in 2004 in How Healthy Are We? A National Study of Well-Being at Midlife, a book edited by Dr. Brim with Carol D. Ryff and Ronald C. Kessler.

Orville Gilbert Brim - known throughout his life as Bert - was born in Elmira, New York on April 7, 1923 and grew up in Columbus, Ohio where his father was a professor at Ohio State University. He was introduced to sociology as a freshman at Yale in the autumn of 1941 and had chosen it as his major field of study when he was called up for officer training in the Army Air Corps. Commissioned a second lieutenant, he spent the remainder of World War II on combat duty in the Pacific theater as a pilot of B-24 bombers.

After his discharge Dr. Brim returned to Yale, earning his B.A. degree in 1947 and his Ph.D. in sociology in 1951. After a year as a research assistant he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin as an instructor and subsequently assistant professor before moving to the Russell Sage Foundation.

During a two-week leave from the Army Air Corps in 1944, Lieutenant Brim was introduced to Kathleen Jane Vigneron. Soon after his leave was up the two were married - a union that lasted almost 60 years and produced four children.

The Brims traveled extensively from their home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and swimming being their favorite sport, spent many vacations and weekends close to sandy beaches and salt water. Together they began to save samples of sand from the ocean beaches they visited. As word of their hobby spread, friends,acquaintances, and even strangers began sending them packets of sand from ocean beaches all over the world. in 2000, with their collection amounting to almost 1,000 different specimens, the couple gave it to the Harbor Beach Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Florida.

In 1985, the Brims settled in Vero Beach, Florida, spending their summers at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and later, Old Greenwich, Connecticut. Kathy Brim died in 2003.