George Gallup
George Gallup was born on November 18, 1901 to George Henry and Nettie Davenport, in Jefferson, Iowa. When young Gallup was in his second year at the State University of Iowa, the family suffered financial reverses. From then on, he supported himself throughout his college years by means of scholarships and by operating a towel concession in the locker room of the school's swimming pool. As editor of the college newspaper, the Daily Iowan, in his junior year, he built the campus journal into one which served the otherwise newspaperless college town, and was supported by advertisements of community merchants.
Following his graduation with a Bachelor's degree in 1923, Gallup remained at the university as an instructor in journalism, concurrently carrying on studies which earned him a Master's degree in psychology in 1925 and a Doctoral degree in 1928. His doctoral thesis, A New Technique for Objective Methods for Measuring Reader Interest in Newspapers, contained the idea which later developed into the Gallup polls. Then in 1932, he accepted a professorship in journalism and advertising at Northwestern University, which he held for one year.
Meanwhile, the theories of reader-interest evaluation which Gallup had devised were being tested in surveys he conducted for several newspapers, including the Des Moines Register & Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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While forecasting the outcome of the presidential elections is not the primary service of the Gallup surveys, it is their most spectacular function as far as the public is concerned.
Gallup is the author of many articles and several books, beginning with The Business Department of School Publications, published in 1927. His other titles are:
He is a recipient of honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Northwestern University, Drake University and Boston University. He also has honorary doctorates from Tufts College and Colgate University. Syracuse University conferred upon him an award for distinguished achievement, and in 1951 the University of Missouri presented him the Missouri Honor Award. He founded the Quill and Scroll, an international honor society for high school journalists. He was president of the Market Research Council in 1934 and 1935 and has been vice president of the National Municipal League since 1942, and the treasurer of the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting since 1934.
George Gallup was described as a friendly man with a comfortable personality. Genealogical research was among his hobbies. His recreations included horseback riding and reading historic novels. He was an episcopalian. Politically, he was used to voting as an independent. On December 27, 1925, he married Ophelia Smith Miller, daughter of a newspaper publisher of Washington, Iowa. He has three children - Alec Miller, George Horace, Jr. and Julia.
He died on July 26, 1984 in Tschingel, Switzerland. Some say, perhaps, he was tired of defending his work before a skeptical nation. He liked Switzerland not only for its mountain air but also for its reliance on referendums. The country was, he enthused, "virtually run by polls".