Van Eyl, F. Phillip (1928- 2021). Papers, 1958-[ongoing].

Florus Phillip Van Eyl was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands. He received his elementary and secondary education in the Hague and two years of university training at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. He served in the United States Army 11th Airborne Division during the Korean Conflict before coming to Hope College to study economics in 1953. At Hope College, he changed his major from economics and received his A.B. degree in psychology (1955), and his M.A. (1958) and Ph.D. (1964) in experimental psychology from the Claremont Graduate School and University Center in California. He became a United States citizen in 1955.

Van Eyl was appointed as an instructor in the two-person psychology department at Hope College in 1959. He later developed Hope’s first psychology laboratory and shepherded the department into its own Shields Cottage and later the Peale Science Center. He also established Hope College's chapter of Psi Chi, the national psychology honorary society, and the men’s soccer program, which he coached from 1965-1968. Van Eyl also served as chairman of the department from 1964-1970 and 1977-1989. In 1966, he served as the director of the Hope College Summer School. He also established a psychology fellowship for collaborative research between faculty and students, the VanEyl Faculty Fellows.

Van Eyl was also active in the research field. In 1967, he was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to research, at the University of Michigan, the topic of induced vestibular stimulation and the moon illusion. His findings were later published in the June 1972 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. During 1968-1969, he conducted research at the University of Ankara in Turkey, where, under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, he established Turkey's first psychology laboratory and taught advanced graduate courses at Hacettepe University. During 1969-1970, he spent a year as a research scientist at the Institute of Perception (RVO-TNO) in the Netherlands, working with the Royal Dutch Air force and the Dutch government agency that deals with aeronautical matters investigating the interaction between the ways in which the eye, the ear, and the central nervous system process information about the environment. The findings of this work were presented in September 1972 at the American Psychological Association’s national convention in Hawaii. That same fall, he participated in an international ecology study, sponsored by the United States State Department and the Greek government. This study, "Ecology Past and Present," concentrated on ecological preservation and enhancement and was held on the island of Milos, and in Athens, Greece, where he assisted in the area of environmental psychology. He continued to be invited to national and international conferences and symposiums throughout his career. In 1973, he was invited to attend the 5th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the symposium on the "Human Response to Tall Buildings" held in Chicago, Illinois in 1975, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Joint Committee on Tall Buildings.

Van Eyl died in Holland, Michigan in 2021.