Biography > Pupils of F. M. Alexander

Margaret Naumburg (1890–1983), US educator, author and founder of dynamically oriented art therapy, and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life While a student at Barnard College, Naumburg shared rooms with Evelyn Dewey (daughter of John Dewey). Naumburg studied with John Dewey at Columbia University and did further studies at the London School of […]

Aaron Sussman (1903–1991), Russian-born US journalist, author, advertising executive, and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Aaron Sussman studied chemical engineering at The City College of New York and journalism at New York University. He started his writing career as a reporter on the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Daily News, and contributed […]

Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880–1969), man of letters, political worker, author, publisher, husband of author Virginia Woolf, and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Woolf worked in the Ceylon Civil Service (1904-11). He resigned in 1912 and married Virginia Stephen the same year. He turned to writing and published his first novel in 1913. […]

Viola Tree (1884–1938), English actress, singer, playwright, and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Tree was born in London, the eldest of three daughters of Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his wife, the actress Helen Maud Tree. Her aunt was author Constance Beerbohm and an uncle was Max Beerbohm.   Tree made a successful London […]

William Temple (1881–1944), Archbishop of Canterbury and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   William Temple was a British churchman and Archbishop of Canterbury (1942-44). He was a conservative Christian but politically of socialist orientation. His broad-minded idealism is expressed in Nature, Man and God (1934) and Christianity and Social Order (1942). He started having […]

Dr Robert Henry Scanes Spicer (1856–1925), doctor and specialist of the throat, and a pupil of Alexander.   Life Dr Robert Henry Scanes Spicer (sometimes referred to as Scanes-Spicer) gained his M.D. in 1885. He studied in throat clinics in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, and was one of the founding members of the Laryngological Society […]

Mary Louisa Beatrice Olcott (1864–1962), US suffragette, world traveller and author,[1] and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Mary Olcott was born in Brooklyn, New York. She received her education at private schools and under the guidance of tutors. She was of a colonial family which had settled in the US in the 17th […]

Alexander Leeper (1848–1934), principal of Trinity College, Melbourne University, and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Alexander Leeper was born in Belfast and completed his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and St. John’s College, Oxford. He took up an appointment in 1876 as principal of Trinity College at Melbourne University. (The title ‘principal’ was […]

Henry Brodribb Irving (1870–1919), English actor and manager, elder son of Sir Henry Irving. He started acting in 1891 and revived many of his father’s famous parts both in England and in America. He also ran his own company, and was manager of several London theatres.[1]   Writings in support of the Alexander Technique Following […]

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894–1963), English essayist and novelist; pupil of Alexander.   Life Aldous Huxley was a prominent man of letters and author of more than 38 books. His early novels (Crome Yellow, 1921, Antic Hay, 1923) were satires on the pretensions of the intellectual elite of his day, exposing the impotence of academic knowledge. […]

William (‘Billy’) Morris Hughes (1862–1952), Australian politician, Prime Minister of Australia (1915–1923), and pupil of Alexander.   Connection with Alexander In 1909 Alexander Leeper presented his ‘The Report on Physical Culture in the United Kingdom and the Continent of Europe’ to the Victorian Teachers and Schools Registration Board. The report recommends Alexander’s method:   That […]

Anthony Mario Ludovici (1882–1971), English translator and author, and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Ludovici began as an artist and illustrator of books and was at one point secretary to Auguste Rodin. Ludovici translated six volumes of Nietzsche’s philosophy, on which he also lectured. He served in WWI and became Captain in the […]

Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), British politician, pupil and supporter of F. M. Alexander.   A lawyer, Cripps entered Parliament in 1931 as a left-wing Labour MP, antiwar and pro-Soviet. He served as Ambassador to Moscow (1940–42) and later served in Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet. He helped to coax Stalin into joining the Allied war […]

Maurice Burton (1898 –1992), a British zoologist and popular science author, and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Maurice Burton read Zoology at London University. He worked at the British Museum of Natural History from 1927 to 1958. He was the Science Editor for the Illustrated London News and Nature Correspondent for the […]

Matheson Lang (1879–1948) was a British actor, actor-manager and playwright, and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Matheson Lang began his career in 1897, and first played in London in 1900. He became well-known for his Shakespearen roles, playing Othello, Hamlet and Romeo, among others. He worked with Sir Frank Benson, Lillie Langtry, […]

James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936), U. S. historian and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Robinson specialised in European history about which he wrote several works. He obtained his Ph.D. at Freiburg in 1890, and was Professor of History at Columbia University 1895–1919 and a founding member of the New School for Social Research in […]

John Dewey (1859–1952), American philosopher of education and pupil and supporter of F. M. Alexander.   Life John Dewey studied at the University of Vermont and at Johns Hopkins University. After two years as a high-school teacher he decided he was unsuited for teaching in primary or secondary education. He received his Ph.D. School of […]

Edward H. Owen (1919 – 2000), UK journalist, pupil of F. M. Alexander, and first editor of the Alexander Journal.   Edward Owen was a journalist who lived for many years in Guernsey. In 1965 he formed an agency specialising in travel and financial matters in Guernsey, and was the Financial Times offical correspondent for […]

Dr Mungo Douglas, Scottish doctor, who was an ardent supporter of Alexander and the Technique.   Life He became a doctor in 1921 and practised in Bolton for most of his life. He became a pupil of Alexander’s in about 1928 or 1929. His wife, Sydney, also had lessons and they became friends of Alexander’s.[1] […]

Raymond Arthur Dart (1893–1988), Australian-born anatomist and anthropologist. He was the originator of what is now known as the Dart procedures.   Life Dart, Raymond Arthur (1893–1988) was an Australian-born South African anatomist and anthropologist. He graduated in medicine at Sydney in 1917, and became Professor of Anatomy in Johannesburg in 1923. He achieved international […]

Lucy Mary Silcox (1862–1947), teacher and headmistress, and pupil of F. M. Alexander   Life Silcox took an M.A. in London and the Classical Tripos at Newnham College, Cambridge. She was Headmistress of East Liverpool High School in 1901 and of Dulwich High School from 1901 to 1908. In 1909 she became Headmistress of St. […]

Waldo David Frank (1889-1967), American novelist, travel writer and essayist, a pupil of F. M. Alexander, and who was first married to Margaret Naumburg and later Alma Frank.   Life Waldo Frank grew up in New York City, attended a college preparatory boarding school in Switzerland, earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale University, and then […]

Lawrence (Larry) Kelso Frank (1890–1968), US educator and child-development expert, and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Frank received a B.A. in economics in 1912 and worked as a systems analyst. In 1923 he became an executive for the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial foundation. He also worked for the General Education Board and […]

Friedrich Robert Donat (1905–58), English actor and a pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Donat made his first stage appearance in 1921, at the age of 16. From 1930 Robert Donat acted in London’s West End Theatres where he also worked briefly as a manager. He is known for several leading film roles, among […]

Arthur J. Busch (c. 1900–66), aka Michael March, was a US journalist, photographer, and a pupil of Alexander.   Life Arthur J. Busch was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was a drama critic for The Brooklyn Times and features editor of The Jacksonville Journal before he became city editor of The Brooklyn Citizen. Later […]

Ron George Brown (1911–55), British journalist, editor and pupil of F. M. Alexander. Ron Brown wrote an important summary of F. M. Alexander’s four books.   Life Ron Brown worked for Reuters, the Times diary, the Evening Standard ‘Londoner’s Diary’ and Associated Press. He also worked for the embryo United Nations in 1944. He was […]

Lily Brayton (1876–1953), British actress and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Lily Brayton made her first appearance in 1896 and became famous for her performance in the rôle of Viola in Twelfth Night in 1901 and as Yo-San in The Darling of the Gods in 1903 or 1904. In 1898 she married the […]

Percy Hugh Boomer (1885-1949), golfer and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Percy Boomer and his brother Aubrey Boomer (b.1897) were professional British golfers and won several championships in the 1920s. According to Wikipedia: ‘Boomer was one of the top teachers of golf in Europe and spent the majority of his professional career at […]

Robert Dudley Best (1892-1984), British businessman and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Best inherited his family brass founder business, Best & Lloyd, known for their lamps and chandeliers (they invented the ‘Surprise’ pendant in 1893 which was the forerunner of today’s angle-poise lamp). Best wrote a biography of his father, R. H. Best […]

Philip Boswood Ballard (1865–1950), Scottish headmaster, author and Inspector of Schools, and pupil of F. M. Alexander.   Life Philip Boswood Ballard, British Inspector of Schools, Doctor of Literature and author. Boswood was Headmaster of Pupil Teachers’ School, Tondu, Glamorgan, 1898–1903, before he became an Inspector of Schools: in Glamorgan 1903–05, and then with the […]

Dr Charles Bage (1859–1930), Australian doctor who was Alexander’s doctor in the early 1890s.   Life Dr Charles Bage (1859–1930). He obtained his medical degree in 1881 and became doctor of medicine in 1884. He ran a private practice in South Yarra, Melbourne, until 1923 and retired in 1925. Dr Bage was a founding member […]