Who2 has a new biography of pollster George Gallup, the man who started the Gallup public opinion polls in 1935.
George Gallup was an Iowa farm boy who got his start in journalism in the late 1920s. While attending the University of Iowa, Gallup edited the school paper on his way to graduating in 1923. He went on to get a master’s degree in 1925 and a Ph.D in journalism in 1928.
While studying journalism, Gallup took surveys on newspaper readership (he wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject). That kind of market research led to a job in the advertising business, at the large New York firm of Young and Rubicam. A couple of years later, Gallup started his own side business in a little office above the Woolworth’s in Princeton, New Jersey. By the time he died in 1984, the Gallup Organization — originally called the American Institute of Public Opinion — had offices all over the world.
Read more in our biography of George Gallup.
