Isabel Briggs Myers

Non-Fiction Author

Birthday October 18, 1897

Birth Sign Libra

Birthplace Washington, DC

DEATH DATE May 5, 1980 (82)

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About

Remembered for co-creating a popular personality testing tool known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs. She also wrote fiction at the start of her career. 

Before Fame

Several years after earning a degree in political science from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, she published her first and only novel, an award-winning mystery titled Murder Yet to Come.

Trivia

Her personality type indicator, originally created as a means of making sense of the character differences between Myers and her husband, grew to be an important tool for educators and employers. By the first decade of the 21st Century, more than two million people were taking the MBTI annually.

Family Life

The daughter of Katharine Cook Briggs and engineer and National Bureau of Standards director Lyman Briggs, she grew up in Washington, D.C. Her marriage to Clarence Myers resulted in two children: Peter and Ann.

Associated With

Her personality typing system was influenced by the theories of the renowned Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Jung.