Mundy-Castle, Alastair 1923 - 2015

(1923-2015), psychologist

Alastair Charles Mundy-Castle was born in Teddington, London on 28 March 1923. He was educated at Tonbridge School, Kent and served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. After the war, he studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and spent a year studying electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) at the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, an independent research specialising in the investigation and treatment of neurological, psychological, and psychiatric disorders.

Mundy-Castle graduated from Cambridge in 1948 and took up a position at the National Institute for Personnel Research (NIPR) in Johannesburg, South Africa. There, Mundy-Castle set up Johannesburg’s first EEG laboratory and conducted research on a wide variety of topics, including alpha rhythms, photic stimulation, and senile psychosis.

With the election of the National Party in South Africa in 1948 and the gradual introduction of apartheid policies, Mundy-Castle fled the country for Ghana, where he was offered the post of Principal Research Officer at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Continuing his EEG research and collecting data from across the country, Mundy-Castle developed an increasing interest in child psychology and intellectual development. On the basis of this work, Mundy-Castle was invited to join the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University in 1967.

In 1970, Mundy-Castle returned to Africa to establish a Department of Psychology at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, where he remained professor until 1982. During this period, Mundy-Castle trained several of Nigeria’s leading psychologists, including Kayode Oguntuashe, Tune Makanju, and Ameche Nweze.

Mundy-Castle died on 11 December 2015.