E. Paul Torrance

Ellis Paul Torrance was an American psychologist from Milledgeville, Georgia.   After completing his undergraduate degree at Mercer University, he went on to complete a Master's degree at the University of Minnesota, and then a doctorate from the University of Michigan.   His teaching career spanned from 1957 to 1984, first at the University of Minnesota and then later the University of Georgia, where he became professor of Educational Psychology in 1966.   Professor Torrance was best known for his pioneering research in the study of creativity.   He developed a benchmark method for quantifying creativity and invented in 1974 the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, which showed that the IQ test was not the only way to measure intelligence.   Building on Guilford's work, they involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on:   Fluency, (the total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus), Flexibility, (the number of different categories of relevant responses), Originality, (the statistical rarity of the responses among the test subjects), Elaboration, (the amount of detail in the responses) (Millar 1995).
Although Torrance is readily identified with his eponymous tests of creativity, assessment of creativity was not a goal of Torrance's.   The tests were designed as a means to an end, not an end in themselves.   Torrance's primary interests lie in discovering and nurturing the qualities that allow individuals to express their creativity fully.   Individuals more familiar with Torrance's work know that his establishment of the Future Problem Solving Program (Torrance, Bruch, & Torrance, 1976), development of the Incubation Model for creative teaching (Torrance & Safter, 1989), and founding of the Creative Scholars Network give testimony to these words (Frasier, 1990).   However, the scientific community, especially in the behaviorist environment of the 1960s, required some...