Edgar Anstey (psychologist)
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Edgar Anstey | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 5 May 1917 Mumbai, India |
| Died | 1 June 2009 (aged 92) Polzeath, Cornwall |
| Occupation | Civil Service psychologist |
| Known for | role during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 |
Dr. Edgar Anstey (5 March 1917 – 1 June 2009) was a British Civil Service psychologist who worked for the Ministry of Defence and who is most noted for his incidental role during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.[1]
Edgar Anstey was born in Mumbai in India in 1917 where his father Percy Anstey (1876–1920), a former actor turned economist, was Principal of the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics and Professor of Economic Theory and History. His mother was Vera Anstey née Powell (1889–1976), also an economist and authority on the economy of India. In 1920 Anstey's father and younger brother died in Delhi of cholera necessitating Vera Anstey to return to Britain with her two surviving children.[2][3][4]
Left with few resources after the death of her husband, Vera Anstey needed to find work to support herself and her children and began a distinguished career as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, while Edgar was brought up by two of his mother's sisters in Reigate in Surrey. Academically able, he obtained a scholarship to Winchester College and later another to King's College, Cambridge where he obtained a double first degree in Mathematics and Psychology in 1938. On graduating he spent a year as a ministerial Private Secretary in the Civil Service before being called up in 1939 at the start of World War II. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment he had 18 months of active service in defending the Yorkshire coast from possible enemy invasion and was promoted to Major. He married Zoë Lilian Robertson (1913–2000) in 1939[5] and with her had a son, David Anstey. From 1941 to 1945 Anstey was at the War Office where his skills as a psychologist were put to use improving the selection tests used for army recruits.[1][3][6]
