Raymond Herbert Stetson (Ph.B, 1893, AM, 1896, Sci.D, 1942) was born on March 1, 1872 in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Reared in a farming family, he was expected to stay and work on the family farm. Once he had reached adulthood it is clear that Stetson was destined for another career given his early strong interest in scientific work at Elyria High School, and he and another student named Ray Cogswell set up the high school's first chemistry laboratory. Stetson’s initial curiosity and brilliance (and a financial push from a sympathetic aunt) led him to enroll in Oberlin College in 1890.

Stetson’s area of undergraduate study was Chemistry. After completing his studies under Frank Fanning Jewett (1844-1926) in 1893 Stetson continued this student/professor relationship by serving as Jewett's graduate assistant. During this same period Stetson also worked on a master’s degree in Zoology, under Professor A.A. Wright (1846-1905). Having completed his master’s in 1896, Stetson set out to work. He received an appointment as Professor of Biology at Tabor College in Iowa, which he held from 1896 to 1899. These years of experience in the laboratory led Stetson to enroll at Harvard University in order to pursue a doctorate in 1899. There he worked under Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916), under whom he wrote a dissertation entitled “Motor Theory of Rhythm and Discreet Succession.” Shortly after he earned his Ph.D in 1901, Stetson accepted a position at Beloit College, teaching in the areas of Psychology and Philosophy. He remained at Beloit until 1909, when he accepted the headship of the new Department of Psychology at Oberlin, this new department having been separated from the Department of Philosophy the same year.

Stetson taught at Oberlin College for the next three decades. Along with the research interests he developed at Harvard University, Stetson was influenced by the work of William Benton Chamberlain (1847-1903), who taught in speech and rhetoric at Oberlin. Stetson drew on this background when he began his lifelong research in speech, motor, and skill movements. His main contributions to the field of psychology are in the areas of speech movements and phonetics, an interest sparked by Abbe Rousselot following a year Stetson spent in France with him during 1922-23. Many of his original theories and experiments are considered ahead of their time, and in most cases were not fully verified and explored until the 1960s.

In addition to his teaching and research commitments, Stetson served on a number of governing committees, including the Graduate Study Committee and the Appointments and Budget Committee of the College Council. Formally retiring in 1939, Stetson nonetheless remained active in college affairs until his death eleven years later.

Stetson’s influence during his lifetime was hindered by factors such as his refusal to “politic” within the field of psychology and some limitations in his written presentation of data. Nonetheless, Stetson was recognized as a pioneer within his field. Stetson’s practice of allowing undergraduate students to make meaningful contributions to his research (a rare practice, even today) resulted in a number of his assistants later becoming very prominent themselves within the field of Psychology. Some of his more famous students include Roger W. Sperry (b.1913, A.B. 1935) and Robert Galambos (b.1914, A.B. 1935).

Stetson’s professional work was clearly the driving force in his life. He never married, preferring to devote himself fully to the tasks of teaching and research. In 1924 Stetson began to share living quarters with Oberlin History professor and bachelor, Frederick B. Artz (1894-1983), and continued to live with Artz until his death. The mid-thirties saw the onset of intermittent claudication in his legs which, as time went on, limited Stetson's ability to walk and eventually led to the amputation of a leg in 1948. It is these developments that led Stetson to have an elevator installed in Peters Hall where his laboratory was located (initially at his own cost), and forced him to buy a car and employ a student driver.

Stetson remained active in retirement throughout the 1940s, but as the decade wore on his health became a severe limitation. While working on a publication entitled “Motor Phonetics,” Raymond Herbert Stetson died on December 4, 1950.