Frances K. Graham, professor emerita of psychology, dies

11:09 a.m., April 19, 2013--Frances K. Graham, professor emerita of psychology at the University of Delaware, died April 16, 2013.

Prof. Graham joined UD in 1986 after careers at Washington University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made pioneering contributions in pediatrics, child psychology and psychophysiology, beginning with the effects of anoxia in newborns and laying the groundwork for decades of research and clinical work with high-risk infants. She is perhaps most famous for her studies of infant attention and orienting.

Prof. Graham served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, president of the Society for Research in Child Development, president of the American Psychological Association Division of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Section on Psychology, and chair of the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors. Her work received federal funding continuously from 1954 to 1993, including a Research Scientist Award from NIMH that paid her salary from 1964 to 1989.

Her honors included the G. Stanley Hall Medal from the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychological Science, the Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. 

She was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1988.