Roland Clark Davis

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 30, 1902,[5] Roland Clark Davis was the eldest child of William Chalmers Davis and Effie Estelle Clark.[6] Davis earned his A.B. in English from Harvard in 1924 and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1930.[7] Upon leaving Columbia, Davis briefly worked as a research associate for the University of Virginia.[7] Davis married Francis Oliver Meacham on September 12, 1927, in Petersburg, Virginia.[8] They had two children, Susan Oliver and Christopher Meacham.[7] In 1931, Davis was hired as an Acting Associate Professor at Indiana University[4] where he established his psychophysiology laboratory in Science Hall.[1] Davis died on February 23, 1961, at the age of 58 in Yellow Springs, Ohio.[9] He was returning home from a meeting at the Fels Research Institute when he suffered a heart attack.[1][2]

At Columbia, Davis was mentored by Robert Sessions Woodworth and Albert Poffenberger.[1] In his 1930 dissertation, “Factors Affecting the Galvanic Reflex,” Davis reviewed hundreds of published articles on the galvanic skin response (GSR), producing an extensive and systematic review of GSR.[10]

Davis was the first to use a vacuum tube as a way to control the electrical current during measurement of the GSR.[11] 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,[12] and he is credited with introducing the cathode-ray oscilloscope technique for measuring muscle action potentials.[1] In collaboration with Douglas Ellson, Irving Saltzman, and Cletus Burke, Davis also developed a lie-detection device.[13][2]

Using gastric balloons and a landmine detector to track the progress of steel balls through the gastrointestinal tracts of volunteers, Davis produced evidence that stomach contractions were largely absent when the stomach was empty, a finding that directly refuted the popular hypothesis of the time that hunger produced the most intense stomach contractions.[2] Davis also used the electrogastrogram (EGG) to study the effects of particular drugs on gastric activity.[1]

Davis also challenged the theory of homeostasis,[14] 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”.[1]

Davis was recognized as a leader in the Department of Psychology, and he was one of the few members of the senior faculty to remain in his position through World War II.[4] Davis was also one of the founding members of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.[2] At Indiana University, Davis directed the master's and doctoral theses of 29 graduate students, including Oran Wendle Eagleson.[4]