William Gidley Emmett

William Gidley Emmett FRSE (21 August 1887 – 5 January 1985) was a British industrial chemist, educationalist and academic author. In education he spoke out against traditional examination methods and developed a series of non-standard tests to assess IQ, now commonly appearing in standard IQ tests, and generally known as the Moray House Tests.

Life

He was born in Beeston, a suburb of Nottingham, on 21 August 1887, the son of William Gidley Emmett, a lace-maker. He was educated at Nottingham High School then won a place studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University in 1905, graduating MA in 1908. He specialised in explosives.

His first job was at a gunpowder factory in Surrey in southern England, then in 1912 he moved to an explosives factory in Japan. He returned to Britain following the outbreak of the First World War, clearly having an important role to play. He worked first at a guncotton plant in south Wales then became manager of HM Factory, Gretna, producing cordite. In 1919 he went to work for Shell Oil Company, being posted variously around the world in locations such as Borneo and Curacao. In 1925 he returned to Britain due to ill-health and took a role as a Researcher at Birmingham University. Here he remet Charles Wilfred Valentine whom he had befriended at Cambridge.^[1]

In 1935 he joined Edinburgh University as a Lecturer in Experimental Education remaining there as Director of the Godfrey Thomson Unit for Educational Research based at Moray House until retiral in 1953. This was interrupted by the Second World War where he again oversaw explosive production, this time under Albert Pilliner.

In 1954, following his retiral, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir Godfrey Thomson, Alexander Aitken, Ivor Malcolm Haddon Etherington and Derrick Lawley.^[2]

In 1955, at the advanced age of 68, he married Margarete Annelisa Hartmann. They had no children. He died on 5 January 1985 aged 97.

Publications

• The Reliability of Examinations (1932) co-written with Charles Wilfred Valentine
• An Inquiry into the Prediction of Secondary-School Success (1945)
• The Trend of Intelligence in Certain Districts of England (1950)
• Instructions (1956)
• Deeside Picture Puzzles (1956)
• Deeside Non-Verbal Reasoning Test (1963)

References