Print
Rita Atkinson, co-author of one of the most widely-used introductory psychology textbooks in academia and a longtime benefactor of UC San Diego, died on Christmas Day of a stroke, the campus said on Wednesday. She was 91.
Atkinson peacefully passed away in Hollywood, Florida, while visiting her daughter, Lynn Atkinson, a retired neurosurgeon, the family said.
The university says Atkinson was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1929 and raised in Leonia, New Jersey, near New York City. She went on to earn a doctorate in psychology at Indiana University, where she met fellow psychology graduate student Richard Atkinson, who later became her husband.