Why is it named the “Rhine” Research Center?
Our Center is named after our founder, J. B. Rhine (1895-1980). Dr. Rhine, with his wife Louisa, came to Duke University in 1927 to join the Department of Psychology there, at the invitation of Dr. William McDougal, an eminent psychologist who was interested in the study of unusual powers of the mind that were suggested by the claims of spiritualists who carried out informal, uncontrolled investigations in sance rooms. Rhine was interested in these questions, and had recently received considerable attention for his role in exposing a very popular medium of the day as a clever fraud. Rhine accepted the challenge of finding some way to use the clear and objective methods of laboratory science to study to study what he came to call the reach of the mind. His Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University developed clear and quantifiable means to determine if in fact the human mind had an “extra-physical” dimension. Using these methods, the laboratory reported a series of astonishing and gro
