He was chair of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University (he was on the faculty of the Univ of Oregon in 1932).

He died during surgery for appendicitis (from a reaction to the anesthesia).

He is listed in the 1930 census (Oregon > Lane > Eugene > District 34 > 8) living with his wife (no kids).

They (parents, Walter and Norman) are listed in the 1940 census (Census Place: New Trier, Cook, Illinois; Roll: T627_783; Page: 62B; Enumeration District: 16-302).

From his listings in the Us City Directories, he lived in Iowa City through 1930), and was married and living in Eugene in 1932. They state he is a lawyer. Finally, they were still living in Eugene in 1942.

*************************
Time Magazine
Education: Words
Jan. 3, 1938

Inexact vocabularians have reckoned the average intelligent adult's vocabulary at about 15,000 words. Recently, however, Northwestern University's Psychology Professor Robert Holmes Seashore* devised a scientific test to determine the total number of English words a person would recognize. It is a multiple-choice examination using sample lists of "basic" and "derived" words from Funk & Wagnails' unabridged dictionary, which lists 450,000 words in all. Dr. Seashore's test includes common words as well as puzzlers like antisialogogue (an agent preventing the...