B.F. Skinner (1904 - 1990)
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania
town of Susquehanna.
Skinner received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate
New York. He got his masters in psychology in 1930 and
his doctorate in 1931, and stayed there to do research until 1936.
Also in that year, he moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University
of Minnesota. There he met and soon married Yvonne Blue. They
had two daughters. 
In 1945, he became the chairman of the psychology department at Indiana
University. In 1948, he was invited to come to Harvard, where he
remained for the rest of his life.
Theory
B. F. Skinner�s entire system is based on operant conditioning.
The organism is involved in the process of �operating� on the environment.
During this �operating,� the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus,
called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This
special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant, which is the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is Skinner's definition of operant
conditioning: �the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the
nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the
behavior in the future.� That is, a behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased
probability of that behavior occurring in the future, whereas a behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results
in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Behavior modification
Behavior modification is a therapy method devised by Skinner which consists of the following:
Extinguish an undesirable behavior by removing the reinforcer and replace
it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on
all sorts of psychological problems and seems to work well with children.
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